Janet Brandt, Day 1, Sermon, September 27, 2003

Ah, hope. What an optimistic holiday this is! It really is all about hope. Every year I come into this room -- or one sort of like it -- and resolve that this year I really am going to change.

And yet, here I am again, having sinned every bit as much in the past year as I did in the year before that. Thank goodness G-d keeps giving us more chances.

But this year, I really am going to get it right, with the help of a new discovery. I have discovered that all this time, I've been praying wrong.

The problem is that, every year, as I thump my chest and ask forgiveness for the sin that I've sinned by hardening my heart or the sin that I've sinned through harsh speech, my mind wanders, and I start to think: "Harsh speech! That time I backed up into James's car and left that tiny scratch -- now that was harsh speech! He really should learn to control his anger. I wonder if he's repenting for the things he said to me."

You know that sin? The sin of inner thoughts? I've always wondered what that meant -- but I think maybe I've figured it out. It's when I wonder whether someone else is repenting with as much sincerity, with as much heart, with as much contrition as I am.

Let's call it "competitive repentance."

When I repent competitively, my mind is focused on the wrong project. Instead of thinking about what I've done wrong, I'm thinking of what someone else has done to me. I'm reacting. I'm blaming. I'm playing the victim.

I was told that we are supposed to incorporate a story or anecdote into each of the High Holy Day speeches. So, Susan, here's mine. It's from Thomas Friedman's book "From Beirut to Jerusalem." (Pick up the book and show it to the congregation.)

Here's the setup. Friedman spends the first part of this chapter lamenting what he calls the "Yad Vashemming" of Israel.

Yad Vashem is the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. It is a beautiful and solemn place, and on its walls are all the names of the six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust.

Friedman is troubled by the fact that Yad Vashem has become Israel's most popular tourist attraction. He believes that the country's fixation on Yad Vashem has caused the people of Israel to focus on their role as history's victim.

Theodore Herzl founded Zionism on hope, on the possibility of change. That's what visionaries do. Friedman defines "Yad Vashemming" as Israel's shift away from Herzl's exhortation -- "If you will it, then it is no dream," to the Hebrew phrase, always said with a shrug -- "Kacha zeh! Ma la'asot?" which means "That is how things are. What can we do?"

In this passage, Friedman interviews the Israeli air force pilot who commanded the bomber squadron that took out the Iraqi nuclear reactor in Baghdad in 1981.

He refers to the pilot as Colonel Z.

(Open the book, but continue reading from the paper.)

Here's what Friedman writes:

I began our discussion by telling Col. Z that I had heard from a friend that the Israeli air force had sponsored a "Holocaust quiz" to see which pilots knew the most about the massacre of the six million.

"It was terrible," said Colonel Z. "I went to the head of the air force, and I pleaded with him. 'Don't allow this. It is terrible.' They actually asked questions like 'How many Jews were killed in Treblinka? How many were killed in Buchenwald?' They wanted to make sure people knew the exact numbers. One question was about how many Jews were put in a concentration camp that was set up in Libya, and one boy answered 500,000. The real answer was 500. But you see, you just build it all up into something that is so big that you lose all perspective, and then you can't grasp what it means when five or six Jews are killed.

"If you take a club and beat a child with it constantly when he is 3, when he is 18 he is still going to be afraid. Our basic outlook is that of a beaten child."

I asked the colonel what he would say if could he make a speech to the whole nation, knowing what he does about the power of the Israeli air force.

The colonel answered without hesitating:

"I would tell them we have the strength to compromise, that a strong, confident nation can make concessions with dignity. If people only knew what I know, they would be much less afraid of making concessions. If we see ourselves always as weak victims, we can't see our own strength. We can't see that we have options. Because of that, we have lost many opportunities. I am trying to teach my son that, but it is not easy."

(Look up, pause, and set the book aside.)

It seems to me that Friedman is on to something -- not just for the nation of Israel, but also for each of us, each person sitting here today, trying to get to the bottom of the conflicts and the pain in his or her life.

Blame is at the heart of conflict. One party blames the other for its troubles and unhappiness. The accused party inevitably responds by saying "no, no. It's all your fault. You're the one who's abusing me."

The Jews blame the Palestinians. The Palestinians blame the Jews. And so it goes, on and on, forever.

But blaming keeps people helpless, and we are here today in the hope of breaking harmful patterns so that each of us can make a truly fresh start during the new year.

(Pause)

For most of us here today, the High Holy Day season starts at Rosh Hashanah. But it doesn't really. The period leading up to the High Holy Days begins with Tisha B'Av, the bleakest day on the Jewish calendar.

On Tisha B'Av, we fast and sit on the floor in the dark and listen to the Book of Lamentations, which tells us that the temples were destroyed because the Jewish people were corrupt. It tells of awful things that we brought down on ourselves because we were evil.

I have always hated the implied message of the Book of Lamentations, and also of Tisha B'Av, which seems to be that the people who murder and torture Jews are doing G-d's work by punishing us for our sins. Why not blame the people who destroyed the Temple, I always ask myself. The Jews didn't do it. Blaming ourselves is like blaming ourselves for the Holocaust.

But then I began to realize that by starting the process of repentance at Tisha B'Av, we start by acknowledging that holocausts happen.

Columbine happened. The destruction of the World Trade Center happened. The terrorism and bloodshed and tragedy in Israel continue to happen almost daily. During the course of any given year, any of us is apt to go through something truly horrible. And when these holocausts happen, we have to deal with their aftermath in our lives.

And this is the time of year when we take stock, when we grapple, when we grade ourselves on whether we are doing that in a constructive way.

Here, I think, is where we have to be careful to separate the process of justice from the process of personal spiritual growth.

The Torah tells us to seek justice, and it outlines a legal system to pursue our grievances. That's largely a political and legal process.

But the process of spiritual growth doesn't have anything to do with grievances. We cannot grow spiritually as long as we continue to cast ourselves in the role of victim, because when we do that, our troubles are always someone else's fault.

The Book of Lamentations doesn’t tell us to blame the Babylonians for destroying the First Temple, although they are the ones that tore it down. It doesn't tell us to blame the Romans for destroying the Second Temple, although they are the ones who did it. It doesn't even tell us to blame that all-purpose source of evil, Amalek.

Amalek, for the uninitiated, is the personification of evil. He is always waiting to destroy us. We are told to remember him -- and, at the same time, in a very puzzling passage, we are told to blot out his memory.

The Book of Lamentations doesn't mention Amalek. It tells us to blame ourselves, to look into our own souls for the source of our trouble and pain, for the source of our holocausts.

The message -- when we can finally grasp it -- is a simple one: Spiritual growth is possible only when we stop looking for someone to blame. Instead, we must look deep into our own souls for the source of our sin.

Because that's the only way we can ever achieve any kind of peace -- either within ourselves or within the world. Two parties who both consider themselves victims can never reach reconciliation.

As Col. Z pointed out in the passage I just read, that attitude keeps us from acknowledging our strengths. It keeps us from seeing all our options. It keeps us from hoping.

Blame keeps us helpless.

As we move from Tisha B'Av to Rosh Hashanah, we aren't just passing time; we are supposed to be navigating toward a spiritual goal.

During this period, we are supposed to make amends with anyone we might have offended during the year. I think one of the lessons we learn from that exercise is that we shouldn't be mistaking our friends, family members, co-workers and fellow congregants for Amalek. If we've been doing that, it's time to stop. It's time to blot out that memory of those grievances so we can focus on our own sins.

The message we learn from Yad Vashem is "Never Forget." And indeed, the Torah tells us never to forget Amalek. But how can we remember him if we must also blot out his name?

Well, perhaps one thing we should never forget is that Hitler built his campaign against the Jews by convincing the German people that they were victims of Jewish greed. Or that Hamas constantly pounds into the Palestinian people that the Jews are to blame for all the miseries of their lives.

Perhaps blame is the source of all evil.

Perhaps "blame" is just another name for Amalek.

Because as long as we focus on victimhood, we can never summon the power to shape our futures, to make next year better than last year. To hope.

Was Amalek at work in the destruction of the Temples? Perhaps.

But if he was, the absence of his name in the Book of Lamentations indicates that we aren't supposed to be focusing on the external sources of our holocausts. Now, during the 10 days of awe leading up to Yom Kippur, we are supposed to focus only on our own sins.

At this time of the year, our job is to blot out the name of Amalek.

Never forget -- but remember to forget. Perhaps, when we also remember to forget, we can return to Theodore Herzl's original declaration of hope -- "If you will it, then it is no dream."

Parsha Page

KOHELET.ORG