“FIVE QUESTIONS IN SEARCH OF AN ANSWER”
PART FOUR –
“What In The Name of God?”
Yom Kippur 5765
September 25, 2004
Rabbi Edward Paul Cohn
Temple Sinai
New Orleans, Louisiana
Have you noticed how people seem to divide into two
types? There are the math-science folks, and then there are the
history-language folks. I don’t mind telling you that for me,
that round the clock obscure cable channel, you know, the one where
there is a lady eagerly working out algebraic equations on a blackboard
for an invisible audience, for me, that’s about as close to a
description of hell as I’ve every seen! Michaelangelo’s portrayal
of suffering in the “Last Judgment” is a cinch compared with the
useless pursuit of "X = who cares?" So you know where I fall on
that choice of preference between math/science and history/language.
This Holy Day, I want to begin with a bit of
history. But I don’t want to scare you math-science folks.
This will be painless. Don’t panic. There will be no pop
quizzes on dates. But suppose I told you that an historian Robert
Heilbroner, has actually managed to divide all of human history into
just three periods. What’s more, he’s assigned to each one of
them a descriptive word in time— a one-word summation which alerts us
to that periods’ essential nature- good or ill. Listen to this.
I
He says from theoretical year zero to 1600’s is the
first period, and the word in time for that period is
“RESIGNATION.” Mind you, not that that time was an unrelieved
dark ages, for there was exciting exploration and Shakespeare after
all, but generally there was the expectation that what was, would
be. The fundamental basic structures of society and culture would
remain. Such was the attitude.
II
Next says Heilbroner came the second period, the
1700’s to the 1950’s, characterized by the word OPTIMISM. Here
was the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, Darwinism, the Social
Gospel and any number of scientific and philosophic expectations of
progress. But you say to me, rabbi, what about those two World
Wars and the Holocaust and Hiroshima? Optimism?
Yes, remember “The War to End All Wars”?
Remember the Russian Revolutions, that for some intelligentsia would
represent the birth of Communism and a sign of future hope? There
was the League of Nations? American Nuclear supremacy, the birth
of NATO, the United Nations Charter. Our own Reform Judaism is a
product of this period with it’s concept of the Messianic Age:
everyday and in every way, we’re getting better. In this period
were the Herzl Zionist congresses, the birth of the Jewish state— yes,
Optimism out of despair.
III
Resignation, Optimism, and now the third: 1950’s To
The Present. The historian searches for these years and the only
one to fill the bill seems to be ANXIETY. We live as W.H. Auden
insists, in “The Age of Anxiety” or as the Irish playwright dubbed it:
“The Morning After Optimism.”
Now the fact of terrorism has exploded upon our
collective vocabularies as no one could have ever imagined.
Crises in democracies, uncertain economies, nihilism, massacres, prison
tortures, ethnic cleansing— all of these create a period of severe
discouragement. Jake Barzun wrote a book titled: From Dawn
To Decadence. That sums it up for many— disillusionment— anxiety
So now, here’s your Yom Kippur day assignment.
I want you to look, with all I have said so far as prelude, I want you
to go ahead and fire up your search engines for a word which is a
summation for now.
It should be big enough, encompassing enough to
describe this perilous moment in which we find ourselves, belying an
awareness of its danger and its possibility. What word would you
choose? There are great scholars, educated and thoughtful people
present here right now. Think! What word-label should we choose
to describe our current situation- filled so often as it is with
violence and irrationality?
And now you know of course, I have my own
suggestion ready to offer. You’d be astonished if I didn’t! I
would choose to call this the AGE OF INCOHERENCE.
In all the universe, there has never before been such an
extraordinary level of communication technology— instantaneous
messaging around an increasingly shrinking, but explosive globe.
Yet, religious fanaticism, as cruel and heartless as ever witnessed,
has reasserted itself and hence we fail to connect with one
another. THE AGE OF INCOHERENCE!
We may listen, but we often do not hear. We
are triumphant in our wireless world, but where earnest human hearts
are concerned, we find ourselves out of range, roaming, and
disconnected. What, in the name of God, is going on? And
are we able to rescue ourselves?
In his forward to his newly published essays, Bill Moyers brings us right to the point. Says Moyers:
Civilization, . . . is not a natural act; it is, rather a veneer of
civility stretched across primal human appetites. . . . civilization
has to be willed and practiced. Otherwise, society is a war of
all against all, powered by individual cunning in the pursuit of wealth
and power. . . . the web of cooperation is under siege.
My dear friends, as Jews this is the day when all
pretenses are shed, all masks are dropped, and on Yom Kippur we dare
not forget that we sin against God when we sin against ourselves— the
family of humankind.
Isaiah’s penetrating challenge fills this sacred
moment with self-accusation. We are no different from our Jewish
brothers and sisters of 2800 years ago to whom Isaiah was speaking eye
to eye. Like them, we too are certain of our piety and take for
granted our moral eminence. But the prophet’s words still
assail us, penetrating through our own religious hypocrisy:
They seek Me daily, as though eager to learn My ways, as if they were a
people that does what is right, and has not forsaken the way of its God.
By no means do I believe that Isaiah’s chastisement
in the name of God was applicable only for the Jewish people, then or
now. Abraham Joshua Heschel used to insist that:
No religion is an island. We are all involved with one
another. Spiritual betrayal on the part of one affects the faith
of all.
And so our question this sacred day is of infinite
import: “What, in the name of God?” We may never know
precisely what was in the hearts of those 19 men who hijacked the four
planes on that Tuesday in September three years ago, but the five page
letter left by their ringleader, Muhammad Atta, revealed a religious
world view which sanctions any level of horror under the guise of
religious faith.
“What, in the name of God?” It is obvious that
today anything goes, as aberrant permutations of religious ideologies
sanction the use of indiscriminate violence. No one is exempt!
Religious fanaticism is the central factor in the
escalation of violence and evil around this world of ours. Look,
one has only to review the headlines in our daily papers: We can
begin with this week’s beheadings— and go on to—
• Hindus and Muslims on the brink of war in Kashmir.
• Muslim Civil War a constant factor in Iraq.
• Serbian Christians to stand trial for atrocities against Bosnian Muslims.
• Palestinians killed by Jewish settlers in the occupied territories.
• Muslim suicide bomber kills a Jewish family of five.
• Murder trial begins for Fundamentalist Christian minister in abortion doctor case.
• Remember the
U.S. Lt. General William Boykin, who preached in 23 churches gloating
over his defeat of a Somalian Muslim war lord. “I knew that my
God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and
his was an idol.”
In a recent column, Tom Friedman asked, what do the Iraqi Shiite
extremists and the extremist Israeli settlers have in common?
Answer: tragically more than one would think. Says Friedman:
Both
movements combine religious messianism, and a willingness to sacrifice
their followers and others for absolutist visions, along with a certain
disdain for man-made laws, as opposed to those from God.
Do you know, that in a recent New York Times
Magazine article Ariel Sharon told the reporter, and here I quote
directly:
All my life, I defended Jews, and suddenly I find myself, you know, being defended against Jews,
Here is an Israeli Prime Minister who fears for his
own life. Not from wild-eyed Palestinian extremists, but from
fanatic Jewish settlers who believe that their own elected leader is
thwarting the divine will of God; that they must own and occupy this
certain square mile of the Holy Land.
We do well to recall that our Torah records that the
very first murder in human history occurred during a religious
act: Cain killed his brother Abel. Their offerings were of
different content, and from this rivalry for God’s favor, violence and
death ensued. Hence a tragedy was born and has been played out,
again and again, far beyond the pages of scripture between Jews and
Christians, Muslims and Jews, and Christians and Muslims. As it
was, so it still remains— everyone is offered the chance to kill or to
be killed in the name of someone’s God.
See, I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse.
Therefore choose life, that you and your children may live.
That, my dear friends, is the perpetual choice
confronting humankind. And yet, as the cartoon “theologian” Pogo
once said of us:
We have faults we haven’t even used yet. Yes, too often we choose poorly.
“Your money or your life!” said the thief on one
dark night to a priest who was returning home to his rectory. But
as the priest reached his hand into his pocket, the thief caught a
glimpse of his ecclesiastical collar.
I see you are a priest. That’s ok. You can go then.
Surprised at this unexpected show of piety, the
priest, trying to reciprocate this saving gesture, offered the armed
man all that he had: a candy bar. To which the robber
replied.
No thank you, Father, I don’t eat candy during Lent.
Do you see the absurdity of those of any religious
faith who major in minors: that fellow who would rob a victim,
but wouldn’t eat a candy bar during Lent? Or those who pride
themselves on reverently fasting all day today, but whose follow-up
behavior tomorrow will be entirely untouched by the powerful message of
T’Shuvah- repentance which permeates the sacred day.
I heard about a fellow who went off to Fenway Park
in Boston to enjoy a Redsocks game. Well, lo and behold, he
caught a fly ball. Now most folks would just take pleasure in
taking it home as a souvenir, keep it as a memento or perhaps give the
ball away to a child or grandchild. But this guy’s delight
gradually turned to shame and distress. You ask why? Well
he was overcome with guilt for having kept this ball, which wasn’t
really his. In the end, he actually packed the ball in a box and
sent it back to the Boston Redsocks with a letter of apology.
Well the management, to their credit, sent him a letter of reply
acknowledging the return of the baseball. But they closed their
letter with this admonition:
Don’t be silly. Put your conscience to better use.
It seems to me, that that is exactly what this day
calls us all to do. And it is precisely what anyone who is
religious ought to attempt. To live, is to be continually
summoned by whatever religion we embrace, to wrestle with the dark
angel of our lesser nature, lest we misuse our faith.
Some years ago, the great minister of New York’s
Riverside Church, Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, was invited to preach at
the University of Beirut. He knew full well that invited for this
festive occasion would be Buddists, Hindus, Jews and Muslims as well as
Christians. And Dr. Fosdick agonized over what message most
needed to be offered. And you know what he told that over flowing
crowd on that memorable day? He said, in the end, your life will
come down to one question:
What has your religion done for your character?
In this world, where too often violent acts make us
ask “What, in the name of God?” we wonder can we really live
together? Is it true as Jonathan Swift once observed, that we
have “just enough religion to make us hate one another but not enough
to make us love one another?”
Well give ear to a word of comfort. Says
Britain’s Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, in his brilliant book, THE
DIGNITY OF DIFFERENCE.
The greatest single antidote to violence is conversation, speaking our
fears, listening to the fears of others, and in that sharing of
vulnerabilities discovering a genesis of hope.
Rabbi Sacks levels a challenge to us all. He asks:
Can we see the presence of God in the face of a stranger, and can we hear the voice of God in a language,
in a faith tradition, in a culture which is not our own?
As I read Rabbi Sack’s book, THE DIGNITY OF DIFFERENCE two realities occurred to me:
Number one: You and I need to become increasingly learned about
our own faith— at a deeper, maturer depth. Have we even begun to
discover the hopeful brilliance and sanity of Judaism’s message in our
fragile world? Of course we haven’t! Temple Sinai
University.
Number two: We need to take that new appreciation and comfort
level which is bound to accrue from our learning and study of our own
tradition, and then open ourselves to the honest and often majestic
differences, which separate us from one another.
It’s long since time that we forget that idiocy
about: “We’re really all the same.” We are not all the
same. Don’t you think faith is far more sophisticated than a DVD
player or a cell phone? Well I find that invariably, they operate
differently from one another depending on the brand. Truth is,
Judaism, Christianity and Islam present very different ideas about the
nature of God and our covenant with God. Each of these faiths has
a different take on human nature. There are some irreconcilable
differences between religious faiths. Get over it!
Judaism is 4000 years old. Christianity 2000,
Islam, 1500. And yes we diverge in so many ways, but we all three
are united by the commandment to protect the needy and to feed the
hungry.
Reverence, restraint, humility, a sense of limits,
these are all essential to the religious imagination. And shame
on those of any faith who stand aside when people are murdered in the
name of God or a sacred cause. Their acts of indifference are
blasphemy.
This past June I attended a lecture by a
distinguished scholar who is now completing a brand new translation of
the Zohar. It was a fascinating presentation, though I am not
ordinarily intrigued with Jewish mysticism. I’ll leave the Zohar
to Madona – or Esther as she is currently called! But this
scholar referred to something important for us to consider today.
Have you ever heard of a water clock? I hadn’t. But it was
a device referred to in the Zohar that was commonly employed by Jews,
Christians and Muslims in the Middle Ages, because all three faiths
have a mystical tradition which summons their adherents to awaken at
midnight to offer prayers to God. We Jews have our prayers at
midnight. And so do Christians and Muslims.
This is how it works. A weight on one side, a
jar of water on the other. The jar is designed with a crack to
assure that its contents would leak at a carefully regulated
rate. And when the jar is finally empty of its water at the
midnight hour, the weight will then drop and sound a bell, which will
awaken the sleepy worshippers.
I say we are all sleeping worshippers. Of
every denomination and creed on the face this earth, we have yet to
wake up from our murderous slumber, and rise to our full moral
height. This is the message for Yom Kippur!
God awaits our report for righteous duty when, as
Dr. Fosdick answered, we demonstrate just how much our faith succeeds
in shaping our character. As my favorite poet, William Blake,
envisions:
Then (says Blake) every man, of every clime, that prays in his distress,
prays to the human form divine, love, mercy, pity, peace.
And all must love the human form, the heathen, Turk or Jew.
Where mercy, love and pity dwell, there God is dwelling too.
Amen.