Shannah Tovah.
This year, I anticipate that our services will end 90 seconds later than last year. I know how sensitive everyone is to the end of services so I wanted to give you all a warning in advance. I feel some guilt that I am sharing this news too late for you to warn your lunch guests, but, if I may, I will take the prerogative of declaring that everyone invited to lunch within the congregation today, please show up 90 seconds later than you had been told to show up for the start of lunch. All agreed? Good.
You may be wondering why we will have an extra 90 seconds for our tefilot. This Rosh Hashanah, and if there are no objections from the congregation, on future Shabbatot as well, we will recite a Misheberakh for Tzahal, the blessing on behalf of the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces. This Misheberakh is recited at almost every Modern Orthodox or Religious Zionist shul in the world.
I credit Matti Friedman’s very powerful book, Pumpkin Flowers, with solidifying my commitment to have this prayer recited at Anshe Sholom. I had questioned whether or not it is appropriate to single out soldiers among all others who serve. Why soldiers and not teachers, or civil servants, or diplomats? Friedman’s book, a brief and poignant narrative of Friedman’s own service in the IDF, alongside other anonymous soldiers in a mostly forgotten war in the Lebanese “security zone,” reminded me that soldiers are uniquely vulnerable to the decisions of politicians and all too often pay the ultimate price for both good and bad decisions.
Teachers and civil servants dedicate their lives to serving their communities and their countries. Their choice to serve demands respect and admiration. Soldiers do not choose whether they will be deployed with wisdom or in folly. They do not choose whether their term of service will pass in tranquility or in danger. Our prayers on their behalf is a recognition of their unique service.
That only explains the first 50 seconds. The final 40 seconds will take a bit longer to explain.
Maimonides, or Rambam, writing in Hilkhot Teshuvah, his Laws of Repentance, offers a bold prescription for spiritual and ethical change:
לְדֶרֶךְְ עַצְמֹו לְהַטֹות רָצָה וְאִם .בְיָדֹו הָרְׁשּות צַדִיק וְלִהְ יֹות טֹובָה לְדֶרֶךְְ עַצְמֹו לְהַטֹות רָצָה אִם .נְתּונָה אדָם לְכָל רְׁשּות בְיָדֹו הָרְׁשּות רָׁשָע וְלִהְיֹות רָעָה
“The capacity to change is given to every human being. If he wants to incline himself to a good path and to become righteous, he has the capacity to do so. If he wants to incline himself to a bad path and become wicked, he has that capacity as well.”
שְׁאָר וְכֵן שׁעַוּ אוֹ כִּילַי אוֹ אַכְזָרִי אוֹ רַחֲמָן אוֹ סָכָל אוֹ חָכָם אוֹ כְּיָרָבְעָם רָשָׁע אוֹ רַבֵּנוּ כְּמשֶׁה צַדִּיק לִהְיוֹת לוֹ רָאוּי אָדָם כָּל לְאֵי נוֹטֶה וּמִדַּעְתּוֹ מֵעַצְמוֹ הוּא אֶלָּא הַדְּרָכִים מִשְּׁנֵי לְאֶחָד שֶׁמּוֹשְׁכוֹ מִי וְלֹא עָלָיו גּוֹזֵר וְלֹא שֶׁיִּכְפֵּהוּ מִי לוֹ וְאֵין .הַדֵּעוֹת כָּל שֶׁיִּרְצֶה. דֶּרֶךְ זוֹ
“Every person is capable of being righteous like Moses our Teacher or wicked like [King] Jeroboam, wise or foolish, compassionate or cruel, stingy or wasteful, and so on for all of the attributes. And there is no one that forces him or decrees for him, nor anyone who pulls him toward one of the two paths; rather, that person, of his own will and awareness, leans toward whichever path he wants.”
Rambam taught that human beings are autonomous and rational with the power to turn on a dime. We are created with free will, and we retain it throughout our lives. Rambam also tells us that those autonomous decisions have cosmic significance:
חַיָּב וְחֶצְיוֹ זַכַּאי חֶצְיוֹ הָעוֹלָם כָּל וְכֵן .חַיָּב וְחֶצְיוֹ זַכַּאי חֶצְיוֹ כְּאִלּוּ כֻּלָּהּ הַשָּׁנָה כָּל עַצְמוֹ שֶׁיִּרְאֶה אָדָם כָּל צָרִיךְ לְפִיכָךְ הַשְׁחָתָה. לוֹ וְגָרַם חוֹבָה לְכַף כֻּלּוֹ הָעוֹלָם כָּל וְאֶת עַצְמוֹ אֶת הִכְרִיעַ הֲרֵי אֶחָד חֵטְא חָטָא
“Therefore a person needs to see himself all year long as if he is half innocent and half guilty, and also [see] the whole world – half innocent and half guilty. If he sins one sin – he has tilted himself and the whole world to the side of guilt and caused its destruction. If she does one mitzvah – she has tilted herself and the whole world to the side of innocence and caused redemption and rescue.”
Is this true?
Can we turn so completely and so quickly? Do we make these choices in such an utterly autonomous and independent way? Do we not have emotions, habits, influences from friends and family?
In the 20th century, Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler offered a different theory of how we make ethical choices. Rabbi Dessler imagined that the landscape of our consciences was a great battlefield with two vast armies fighting for control over territory. On the one side, the forces of good. On the other side, the forces of evil. Whereas Rambam had taught that we each have complete control over our characters with the ability to transform ourselves in an instant into someone as righteous as Moses himself, Rabbi Dessler noted that in a battlefield, some territory lies far behind enemy lines and cannot be reached without a long and hard struggle. Other territory lies safely inside one’s own territory and is not at risk.
But, there is a front line. There is a place where the two armies clash and push against each other in one direction and then the next. That is where the fighting is fierce. The no-man’s land between the two armies is where territory can be lost or gained. To play out the analogy, there are levels of pious and saintly behavior that are not real options for who we actually are. And there are levels of depravity and cruelty that are not real temptations for any one of us. But there is a point where good and evil clash, the nekudat ha-bechirah, and our ability to change ourselves is focused on that point.
Is this true? Since the First World War, when Rav Dessler formulated this metaphor for ethical struggle, warfare itself has been transformed. Armies no longer face each other across clear front lines. And the metaphor no longer effectively describes the landscape of our struggle to do good. We act with hidden motivations. We cause harm while trying to do good. We confront the unintended consequences of decisions made with only the best intentions. And so very often we choose, not between good and bad, but between conflicting goods—and sometimes we must choose between different bad options.
How can we make ourselves better, let alone make the world better, if we don’t know where to, so to speak, aim our weapons?
Rav Avraham Kook, Eretz Yisrael’s Philosopher-Poet Laureate and first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of British Palestine, introduced a new theory of teshuvah that can dramatically change our understanding of this concept.
In one of his early works, Mussar Avikha, written by Rav Kook while he was still a community rabbi in Lithuania, he writes:
“Truth is inscribed within our natures and our soul will not give us rest until we express that inner true nature, which is that all of our character traits and attributes should be used for the service of God.”
In Orot HaTehsuvah, he expands and writes:
“Teshuvah comes from the longing of the entire universe to become better and more pure, stronger and more elevated than its current state…Teshuvah resides in the depths of existential life, for it preceded the universe, and before sin arrives its teshuvah is already prepared. Therefore, nothing in this universe is as certain as teshuvah, and, ultimately, all will be repaired.”
Rav Kook teaches us that God created the world with a particular vision in God’s mind. The universe does not completely conform to God’s vision but creation is dynamic. All creation is moving towards God and is moving towards alignment with God’s vision for the universe. Teshuvah is the name of that movement towards God.
The processes of evolution, wherein species become better adapted to their environment is part of teshuvah. The development of science that enables us to live with greater comfort and to confront disease and famine is part of teshuvah. The return of the Jewish people to Eretz Yisraelis also part of this cosmic process of teshuvah. And so too, of course, is reconciliation between two people.
But not only reconciliation between two people. Reconciliation between two peoples is also part of this process of teshuvah. Indeed, in a famous and somewhat poignant passage, Rav Kook explained that the Jewish people’s return to Eretz Yisrael gained momentum only after the First World War, since that was understood to be the “war to end war” and Jewish statehood requires and must coincide with an era of peace. Rav Kook was quite wrong about his timeline, but he was quite right in his estimation of the value of peace.
Last summer, I traveled to Israel and spent several days meeting Palestinian activists and individuals affiliated with various NGOs as part of a delegation of American rabbis and Jewish professionals arranged by the organization Encounter. I have not spoken publicly about the trip because I do not yet know what it all means and how to integrate what I experienced and what I learned into a coherent set of opinions. The trip was hard work. It is not easy to hear, for hour after hour, perspectives that are not only so different from my own, but also so fundamentally opposed to how I understand the world. Although I felt that my participation was important, my mood was often pessimistic and heavy.
But one speaker was optimistic and the visit to his center was the most hopeful moment of the trip. His name is Ali Abu Awwad and he will speak here at shul, on behalf of the Federation and all of the neighborhood synagogues this coming Sunday evening, along with Rabbi Hanan Shlessinger, a resident of Alon Shvut. The title of their presentation is “Unlikely Partners for Peace,” but they don’t have a diplomatic solution to one hundred years of conflict. What they have created, and which gave me optimism, is a belief in respecting the dignity and humanity of one another and the conviction that peace and reconciliation and justice and security are all connected to one another and must be based on real feelings of solidarity between people before it can be treated by diplomats.
I’m grateful that the Federation has made this presentation possible and that the other Chicago synagogues, even the ones with larger parking lots, have agreed for Anshe Sholom to host the event. I encourage you to attend the presentation on Sunday because there is so much concern for Israel and its future in this congregation and it has become so hard to imagine how there could be a “happy ending” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Listening to the two of them describe their relationship just might give us a bit more hope for people and a land that mean so much to us all.
I also want to encourage you to attend because the process that the two of them have initiated—reconciling and trying to understand one another across a vast divide of nationality and religion—is core to the process of teshuvah that this season celebrates. There will be, one day, a happy ending to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because there will be, one day, a happy ending to every tragic story on earth and the movement towards that happy ending is called teshuvah.
Centuries ago, Rav Nahman of Breslov composed a prayer for peace. Rav Nahman was an iconoclastic Hassidic rebbe who believed that the prayers we recite from the siddur should be augmented by prayers that we recite, spontaneously and naturally to God in our own words, and many of his personal tefilot have been collected. This is somewhat ironic. Once spontaneous and improvised prayers are written down and published, they are no longer spontaneous and improvised. Be that as it may, in 1967—almost fifty years ago—in the weeks of fear and anxiety leading up to the outbreak of the Six Day War, shuls in Jerusalem began reciting Rav Nahman’s prayer for peace. When I first spent a summer in Israel and began to attend a shul there, it was at Yakar, a very special community where this tefilah for peace was still recited almost thirty years later.
I’d like to take 40 seconds today and in future weeks, to recite Rav Nahman’s Prayer for Peace. It anticipates Rav Kook’s understanding that the world was created for a purpose, and that movement towards that purpose is the perpetual dynamic of teshuvah.
I’ll recite it now in English and will recite it in Hebrew in a few moments after we recite prayers for the governments and for the soldiers of the IDF.
יהי רצון מלפניך ה׳ א-להינו וא-לוהי אבותינו
May it be Your Will, Lord, Our God, and God of our Ancestors
That war and bloodshed cease from the Earth
And may peace, great and wondrous spread across the Earth
And nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war any more.
But rather all who inhabit the world will understand the utmost truth
That we have not come onto this Earth
For conflict or argument, heaven forbid!
Nor for hatred, jealousy, upsetting others, or bloodshed – heaven forbid.
Rather we have only come onto this Earth
To recognize and know You, may you be blessed Forever.
Amen.
Shannah Tovah.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 