Ed Koch and the Lost Arc

I imagine many of us took the opportunity to watch portions of the funeral of Ed Koch, the outspoken, good-hearted, former mayor of New York.

Mayor Bloomberg made a number of insightful comments in his eulogy.

He pointed to Koch’s advice to him when he first started out in politics.  Say what you think and don’t worry about what others think.

He observed that Koch had the confidence and courage to believe that problems could be solved.

And he said that Ed Koch restored the arc of our city’s history, commenting on how he began to rescue the city from decline.

Former President Clinton admired how Koch continued, until the very end, to concern himself with the public good.

One thing he said in particular struck me, and I want to expand upon it.

Clinton said of Koch that he always concerned himself with the impact that government would have on real people’s lives.

Right, Left and Together

The Israeli elections surprised virtually everyone.   The expectation was that the extreme right wing in Israel would gain greater strength than they had before, and lo and behold, a centrist party under the leadership of a charismatic politician, journalist and actor named Yair Lapid, gained more seats than anyone expected.

I’d like to take us on what I hope will be an enjoyable and enlightening ride.  I want to talk about what motivates left-wing and right-wing thinking.  And the 10 commandments.  And the importance of unity, given the reality of diversity.

But first, I want to say a few words about ketchup, that delightful sauce that we squeeze onto hamburgers.

Somehow Finding Our Way

First, a classic story.  Sammy comes home from Hebrew school and his parents say, “what did you learn today?”  He says, “The teacher told us a story about how a long, long time the children of Israel were being chased by Pharaoh and his soldiers.  They got to the edge of the sea and they were trapped.  All of a sudden, God sent Apache helicopters and the Israelites got on them.  A they were flying away, the Egyptians began firing semi-automatic rifles.  The Israelites fired back with Uzis, and before long, they landed safely on the other side of the sea where they boarded 747’s and flew first-class, straight to Tel Aviv.”

The parents are a little surprised by the story.  “Is that what your teacher actually told you?” “Not exactly,” says Sammy, “but if I told you the story my teacher told us, you’d never believe it.”

About this morning’s story, including the splitting of the sea and the Israelites’ safe passage through it, many students of all ages have asked the question, did it happen?  Is the story true?

Elie Wiesel once wrote that there are some things which happened which are not so true and some things which may or may not have happened that are very true.

Speculation and archaeological research notwithstanding, it’s not likely that we will ever determine the degree of historical truth behind this pivotal story in the Torah.

I challenge us, instead, to consider its emotional truth.

Beyond the Life of I

As of last Wednesday, the president of Syria was floating on a Russian warship off the coast of Syria, continuing to order the wanton destruction of his citizens, refusing any compromise, and adding that if things reach a certain point, his Syrian supporters should aim their missiles at Israel.

Political analysts across the board say it’s only a matter of time before he leaves the country permanently.

He had the opportunity to end the violence at numerous points during the previous year and did not, choosing to maintain a death grip on his country that has had disastrous results.

How does a leader become so desensitized to the needs of his own people?

There is a neurotic ego at work here, whereby a leader loses sight of the value of his constituents – when the “I” fills the room, there’s no room left for anyone else.

I’d like to examine an ancient showdown and the insight it provides for us about the danger of total self-absorption and the need to look beyond ourselves altogether.

I'll call this sermon, Beyond the Life of I.

Violence and Responsibility

I read a novel over the past week which I highly recommend.  It was written by David Grossman and it’s called To the End of The Land.  It takes place in Israel and the main character is a mother whose son decides to reenlist in the Israeli Army after his official army service has ended.

She is petrified that he will be killed in a dangerous offensive that he is part of.  She lives in persistent fear that she will receive a knock on her door, followed by the bearing of tragic news about her son.  So she leaves home and, with the boy’s father (not her husband but you find that out early on) embarks on a journey of discovery and memory.  Her magical thinking, which of course she recognizes as such, is that if only she stays away from home, no one can knock on her door and deliver the bad news.

It’s an amazing novel by an extraordinary author – among his close friends are Amos Oz and A B Yehoshua – a great story, superbly drawn characters, a complex meditation on memory and fear, life and death – and one of the themes it explores is the near obsession we have with protecting our children. 

The mother in the story feels helpless.  Her son reenlisted  and tells her he has done so at the last minute.  He is out of her sight and surrounded by danger.  And yet she does not act helplessly – she regales the child’s father with information about his son that he did not know, since he was detached while their son was growing up for his own reasons.

And during her son’s service, when she would see him on leave, she is not quiet about her opinions regarding the war and the occupation.   She is vivacious, intelligent, loving, with a strong moral compass and a recognition of the complexity of the situation.  She is quite capable of giving a “what for” in multiple directions – toward the Arab captors of her son’s father; toward her son for not speaking out when someone in his platoon left an elderly Arab man in a meat locker for several days.

Within her limited capacity, she acts and speaks with a sense of purpose.

A few days ago, the students at Sandy Hook Elementary started school again in a nearby location, painstakingly designed to reproduce their actual school as accurately as possible.

Do We Belong Anywhere?

Fair Lawn, NJ, circa 1980.  I was a freshman in Fair Lawn High School.  It was the holiday of Sukkot, a weekday, and I was walking to services, a little bit earlier than my mom.  I was walking to the local Conservative synagogue.  There was a group of kids my age walking to the Orthodox synagogue that I passed.  There was a group of kids walking to high school that I passed. 

Though I had friends in both groups, I felt, to invoke the Yiddish expression, nicht ahin, nicht ahier – neither here nor there.  I felt like I didn't quite belong anywhere.

This sermon is devoted to the part of us that is neither here nor there, the part of us that struggles to discover our identity as we navigate between worlds. 

We may navigate between family and work, between the traditions of our parents and grandparents and the inclinations of our children, between one part of the community and another.

And if we do that, we are likely to feel at times that we don’t fully belong anywhere.

TIWRA - Truth Is, We Are Accountable

Over 25 years ago I got invited to tea in England.  The invitation came from a professor that I got to know through my involvement in the Jewish community during my junior year abroad.

I was 20 years old and what did I know?  I’m not proud of this, but I’m telling the story to make a point.  I was ambivalent about attending.  By way of rationalizing, I suppose, I assumed he’d invited tons of people, that it would be crowded and no one would miss me.  I didn’t go. 

Turned out, he didn’t invite tons of people and if you understand English teatime you know where this is going.  I found out subsequently that he’d set four places at the table in addition to those for his own family, and one of the four was for me, the American who, according to most of the people I met, was spending the year learning English as a foreign language.  That place was quite noticeably empty. 

When I found that out I felt terrible and called to apologize and he "kept a stiff upper lip" and was most gracious and life went on.  But I never forgot the incident and I’ve tried to be more respectful and careful.

You may have read a recent article in the Style Section of the Times about how people are cancelling appointments last minute by text messaging.  SCUSS.  Something came up, so sorry. . .