Working to Make a Difference:  Beyond Opportunity to Mitzvah

A story is told of a King whose daughter was to be married in 3 months.  He sent out invitations to his entire kingdom for everyone to come and celebrate at the wedding feast.  He also asked that guests not to bring gifts.  All that he requested, was that each household, in the weeks before the wedding, should bring a pitcher of their finest red wine to the town square.  There, he had erected a huge barrel - 8 feet tall and 4 feet wide.  During the weeks that led up to the wedding, each household was to bring their pitcher of wine to the barrel, climb up a ladder and open the lid and pour it in.  In this way, when it came time to toast his daughter and her new husband, they would do so using the shared bounty of the entire community.

As the weeks and months passed and the wedding date grew closer, a representative from each household came to the town square, climbed up the ladder, opened the lid and poured their pitcher into the huge barrel.  It slowly filled with each offering until it was almost completely full.

Finally, the day of the wedding arrived.  The bride and groom stood under the Chuppah, rings were exchanged, the glass was broken. Everyone shouted MAZAL TOV!!!  Then, at the beginning of the feast, the King prepared to bless the wine and called for the 1st toast.  He held a clear, crystal glass up to the tap on the bottom of the barrel.  He broke the seal, opened the spigot and out came a stream of pure…..water.

You see, each townsperson, as they heard about the King’s request, thought to themselves: “So many people are contributing to the King’s toast, and it’s such a huge barrel, if I just pour water in, no one will know the difference!  So, one by one, thinking that their contribution didn’t count, each person poured water, not wine, into the barrel.

The moral of this story is obvious – but worth stating:  Every member of a community has value.  Every one of us has an essential and vital perspective to share.  If everyone does not feel as though their contribution is going to make a difference, then, in the long run, we are all diminished.

Two weeks ago, our Tahoe-Douglas Rotary club welcomed a fellow rotarian from Scotland.  Given the floor for a few minutes, our visitor shared his views on the upcoming vote in Scotland.  For those not familiar, Scotland voted for independence last week.  And while there was much to learn from our visitor at Rotary, the upsides and the downsides of independence, the rigorous campaigning on both sides, what is still with me, what I remember most about that election was not this great, personal and individual perspective but it is a statistic.  Last week, the voter turn out in Scotland was 84%.  I had to read the headline a second time, so let me say it a second time.  The voter turn out for the Scottish independence vote was 84%. 

Just to paint a comparison, our most recent election, the primary in June was under a 40% turnout on the California side and just a hair above in Douglas county.  The previous South Lake City Council election in 2012 was just over 60% and in 2010 it was less than 50% when it wasn’t a presidential year.  

Last week in Scotland, they all brought wine to the barrel. 

In America’s recent history, and especially in our own community, we bring water.

I don’t know about you, but wine certainly goes better at a wedding!  In all seriousness, though, there is something askew here.

Last week, Scotts decided that they wanted to make a difference.  They wanted to be heard in what has been heralded as the single biggest decision in those voters’ lifetime.  I believe they also understood something that has been lost for many here, in our town, our community, our country.  We have lost the sense that we can make a difference. 

In our Talmud we are reminded in a very simple way, that every effort, every little action makes a difference.  In Baba Bathra we are taught, “Just as in a garment every thread unites with the rest to form a whole garment, so every penny given to charity unites with the rest to form a large sum.”  Or for those who prefer Ghandi’s words over the Talmud, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”  Whatever the source, we can find countless invaluable arguments for our individual roles in making a difference, in affecting change in our world. 

Making a difference in our world is something we, as modern Jews, are familiar with.  Even from the ancient world, the call of the prophets rings through to today; it charges us to right wrongs and correct injustices.  The famous words of the prophet Amos, echoed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., drive home this connection, “Let justice roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”  From the original sojourn of Abraham to create a better reality to the ancient call of the prophets, we have felt the urge to make the world a better place.  In the words of my colleague and friend, Rabbi Asher Knight, “Judaism provides us with the tradition and the community whose rituals, stories and whose texts, and reinforcements of those texts, keep reminding us to act on our values:  Compassion, decency, humility, justice, generosity of self and spirit.”       

When we consider the water and the wine, the election experience in Scotland last week and the Jewish role in the civil rights movement, we recognize there is something that intricately ties them together.  The Jewish call of Tikkun Olam - repairing the world - is certainly a strong component of our existence today, in the modern world.  It was the modern sage, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel who led the way for so many amongst the Jewish people to engage in the Civil Rights Movement.  Yet, it was his words upon reflecting on his experience in marching from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965 that paint the picture of our tradition’s true call, that of deed being as strong, if not stronger, than creed.  When Heschel returned home from Selma, he wrote, “For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer.  Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling.  And yet our legs uttered songs.  Even without words, our march was worship.  I felt my legs were praying.”

This, the social dimension, is one arena, certainly in our own country, in which our people have excelled.  We have been a part of seeing to the needs, of the needy.  We have found Jews amongst leaders for justice, for fighting poverty, and in the civil rights movement.  We have not been absent from continuing Abraham’s sojourn in ensuring a better reality for so many.  By no means is this task complete, it is something we must always continue, yet there is another dimension to ensuring all we can for a better tomorrow, there is a broader scope possible for our work.   

On Rosh Hashanah, this Yom Teruah - Day of Sounding, the sound of the shofar plays an integral role.  Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, zichrono livracha, taught about the Shofar that, “Maimonides speaks of the shofar as an awakener.  We want to awaken to a higher awareness that gives us a perspective from which we can see the flaws in the routines of life and how they can be improved.  The word shofar can be derived from leshaper, fixing or improving.  Shapr ma’asehem:  Shofarot encourages us to repair our deeds.  The awareness provided by the shofar blast enhances our experience of this reflective day.” 

We improve our deeds by taking them to the next level, to engage fully in what it means to be a player, a confident, intentional and integral traveler in this journey of life.  Working to combine knowledge, skills and values to make a difference in our world, that is engagement, but it is not just in the social dimension.  While it is chief among the causes to alleviate poverty and to shelter the homeless, we must also engage civically, tying together our moral and civic sense of responsibility. 

Thomas Ehrlich, former Indiana University president, wrote, “Civic engagement means working to make a difference in the civic life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values and motivation to make that difference.  It means promoting the quality of life in a community, through both political and non-political processes.”

Yes, we have advocated in the political process as a people.  Lobbying on behalf of Israel, engaging, as Rabbi Heshcel, in the Civil Rights Movement even the labor movement at the turn of the twentieth century considered many prominent Jews amongst its ranks.  Today, we, as a people, do much to respond to the needs of the hungry, the homeless and all of those in need.  But, when it comes to understanding how these moral and civic causes are tied together and intricately intertwined, I believe this is where we need to heed the call of the shofar, to awaken to the possibilities.  In that same publication, Professor Ehrlich goes on to write, “A morally and civically responsible individual recognizes himself or herself as a member of a larger social fabric and therefore considers social problems to be at least partly his or her own…”  It is about how we understand the work we do and the roles we fill as individuals as compared to how we see ourselves as part of the fabric of the whole.

Rosh Hashanah, the head of the year, is not just a time to see ourselves in the fabric of the Jewish people - although it is certainly a huge component of the day - it is also the time to recognize the communal calling of our tradition.  Moving through the liturgy of this day, as we have done, hearing the troubling words of the binding of Isaac in our Torah and engaging together next week in the Vidui, the confessionals of Yom Kippur, we cannot avoid that this season is about the community.  We are all too familiar with the chant we engage in together:  Ashamnu, bagadnu, gazalnu, all verbs in the plural.  Even the hallowed words of Avinu Malkeinu ring in this same plural form.  We are here together; praying and repenting, reflecting on and envisioning all that was, and all that can be.  Our engagement in our world is hemmed in by the individuality we express.  America has given us so many amazing opportunities to express that individual reality of our own homes, our own cars, the way we dress, living in the insular world of our own technology; it is up to us to understand from the perspective of minyan.  We cannot pray effectively, our tradition teaches, without a gathering of minyan - 10 adult Jews.  The merits of that requirement not withstanding, the thrust of Judaism elevating the community as paramount is unequivocal. 

Rabbi David Wolpe writes, “Two constant questions in Jewish history:  What is our obligation to other Jews?  What is our obligation to the world at large?”  He goes on to teach that Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first chief rabbi of Israel, taught that these two questions are inseparable saying that:  Love for Israel implies the love for humanity.  We must balance where these concerns lie.  When the Jewish people finds peril, our concerns focus inward, but when issues plague humanity, we muster a universal response.

I fear that this universal response, the role we have the potential play in our wider communities has waned.  We have found our success in this country socially, financially, educationally, professionally and even in the public realm.  Where has our yearning to engage civically disappeared?  This is not something that is unique to our people, but to our country as a whole.  It is an opportunity for us as Jews to demonstrate why this matters, to act.  It becomes an opportunity for us to vote, to sit on civic committees and commissions, to speak out about matters big and small. 

In the Talmud, a great question is asked, “Who is wise?” and in responding to its own question, we find the answer, “The one who envisions the future.”  I am confident this is not about crystal balls and Tarot cards, rather about those who lay the groundwork.  It is about being wise to engage in the process to make our communities, our societies, our cities, towns and country all that it can be.  Rabbi David Stern of Temple Emanuel in Dallas, Texas, wrote, “Our faith calls us, every day, to bring the far-off into the near reach of our Jewish [moral] concern. And it means that our faith commitments can’t stay on this side of the stained glass, that our Torah gets restless if we leave it in the ark too long. When we take the Torah scroll off of the bima and walk with it amidst the community, we make a physical statement that the Torah does not live in the ark - it lives in the world. We take it in procession around the sanctuary not so that we can walk with it, but as a reminder that it needs to walk with us, wherever we go.”

We take Torah out into the world when we not only register to vote, not only when we vote in the presidential election but when we voice our opinion, express our values for our future at every possible chance - the primaries and the mid-term elections, the referendums and the city elections.  We unroll Torah and share it with the world when we respond to a survey about what we want from our officials, what we believe will make our neighborhoods, our schools and our streets safer and better.  We live the words inked on the parchment when we take on leadership roles in and around our own communities and speak not only from a Jewish perspective, but from the communal words, from the perspective of minyan. 

Moments ago, we heard the blasts of the shofar.  We heard the full and wholesome blast of Tekiah - awakening our souls, our minds and our bodies to all that is possible.  We heard the Shevarim - the three connected short sounds yearning to be whole, allowing our ears to lead us to the broken connections in our world.  And we heard the Teruah - the nine short notes completely divided - a brokenness in our world.  But ultimately the shofar service concludes with the great sound of the Tekiah Gedolah, the long, full, enduring blast of our envisioning the future.  It is up to us to engage.  To heed the demands of modernity, which are opportunities.  To recognize that working to make a difference in our world was once an opportunity we, as Jews, yearned for; now it has moved beyond opportunity to Mitzvah - it is commanded of us to engage - to intertwine the morality of our social concern, what we have been so good at for generations, with everything that makes our communities tick - to see the moral and the civic as forever interrelated and connected.

A few moments from now our services will conclude; our prayers will be offered, our thoughtful introspection at this season well on its way and our High Holiday melodies heard and shared and we will celebrate the New Year with challah, honey and a bit of kiddish wine - hopefully not watered down.  But our work will be just beginning.  As you exit, there will be an opportunity to register to vote - if you are not registered, please do.  Participate in our High Holiday food drive by taking home a grocery bag, filling it and a few others with food for St. Theresa’s food bank and Austin’s House, a transitional housing facility for youth, in the Carson Valley, look for opportunities to engage in our community - get involved by being an educated and concerned citizen, not just for our own individual interests, but seeing the community as a living, breathing and growing being that needs advocates too. 

Shanah Tovah U’mitukah - A Happy and Sweet New Year filled with all of us engaging in making our world and our communities what they can be!