Yom Kippur AM 2013/5774 “Anchor yourself” Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg
It’s August 21st and the Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy in Decatur, Georgia is on lockdown[1]. Police surround the school, and an armed man has made it into the front office. He is filling multiple ammunition clips and loading his guns. In the meantime, Antoinette Tuff, a clerk seated at the front desk, talks to him. She shares some of her story with him – about the challenges she has faced in her life. He shares how he has no reason to live – that he is going to die today – that he hadn’t taken his medication. And she, drawing on a teaching her pastor has been using in church, “anchors herself in the Lord.”
In our Torah portion this morning, Moses teaches, “I have set before you life or death, blessing or curse; choose life, therefore, that you and your descendants may live – by loving the Eternal your God, listening to God’s voice, and holding fast to the One who is your life and the length of your days.”[2]
“Hold fast to the One who is your life and the length of your days.”
“Anchor yourself to that which is within you and beyond you – the source of life – the source of love,” our Torah teaches.
Afterwards, Antoinette reflected:
“[I realized] it was bigger than me. He was really a hurting young man, and so I just started praying for him. And I just started talking with him and allowing him to know some of my life story and what was going on with me and that it was going to be ok, and then let him know that he could just give himself up [to the police].”[3]
When Michael Brandon Hill first entered the office, he wouldn’t even share his name. But after an hour of talking with Antoinette, he shared that nobody loved him. Her response? “I just explained to him that I loved him,” she said.[4]
She didn’t know this person. He was holding a gun. Her life was in his hands. She was terrified.
“I just explained to him that I loved him,” she said.
Michael had come, intending to shoot up the school and then to die in a shootout with police; instead, Antoinette talked to him while teachers, staff, and 870 children waited in the locked-down building. She persuaded him to lay down his weapons, he eventually surrendered and the school was evacuated; nobody was injured.
She was terrified. And yet, she anchored herself. She held fast – to something bigger than herself. She held fast to life and to love. Love for a stranger with a gun who was ready to take her life. She anchored herself in empathy – she saw herself and her children in this man. She identified with his suffering.
What Antoinette did and said may not have worked in every instance with every person intent on killing. But it worked in this instance. What a powerful example for all of us.
Antoinette Tuff is a spiritual superhero, and her superpower is love.
“Choose life. . . by loving the Lord your God. . . and holding fast to the One who is your life and the length of your days.”
Antoinette internalized this teaching of love that we read this morning and which has been taught throughout the ages by other spiritual superheroes such as Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Just a couple weeks ago our nation marked the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s march on Washington.
The principle of non-violence that lay at the heart of his teaching was love.
“Non-violence chooses love instead of hate,” he taught. “Non-violent love gives willingly, knowing that the return might be hostility.” “Non-violent love is unending in its ability to forgive in order to restore community.” “Love restores community and resists injustice.” And, “non-violence recognizes the fact that all life is interrelated.”[5]
On this Yom Kippur the Torah calls upon us to choose life and love for ourselves and for the community in the coming year. In our haftarah, the prophet Isaiah[6] exhorts us to build a world based on love, empathy, and justice.
The prophet complains bitterly that while we sit here in shul fasting and praying for our own redemption, out in the world, we perpetuate oppression, injustice, and violence. Isaiah cries out – “Your fasting leads only to strife and discord, and hitting out with cruel fist!”
“Is not this the fast I look for,” Isaiah challenges us, “to unlock the shackles of injustice, to undo the fetters of bondage, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every cruel chain? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and to bring the homeless poor into your house?”
God doesn’t care as much about our fasting on this day as much as God cares about what we are doing to build a community free of cruelty, of hunger, of division.
Dr. King called this ideal community, “the Beloved Community.” According to King, in the Beloved Community, “poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. . .. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred.. . .” For King, desegregation and voting rights were not the end goal of nonviolent boycotts and marches and sit-ins – the Beloved Community was the real end goal.[7]
At the heart of this Beloved Community was a specific type of love, called “agape.” King described agape as “understanding, redeeming goodwill for all,” an “overflowing love which is purely spontaneous, unmotivated, groundless and creative.” For King, “Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people…It begins by loving others for their sakes.” It “makes no distinction between a friend and enemy; it is directed toward both…Agape is love seeking to preserve and create community.” [8]
Antoinette Tuff’s love made no distinction between friend and enemy. She understood in that harrowing hour that she was part of a Beloved Community, and that if she could help this troubled young man feel that he was a part of that community too, she might be able to disarm a would-be mass murderer. In that school office, as Antoinette shared her story of overcoming her own suffering, and as Michael shared with her his despair, a sense of solidarity between them allowed love and trust to triumph over fear and hatred.
Solidarity – a sense that there is no separation between me and you – the understanding that as human beings, we all know the same suffering, the same joy, the same fear.
Solidarity.
Most of us know the goose bumps of seeing that photo of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching with Dr. Martin Luther King – of seeing footage of white students sitting with black students at those lunch counters. Those bridges between people are what made things like the Voting Rights Act of 1965 possible. And that solidarity is something that we still need to build today, if we want to continue to bring our world closer to redemption.
We’ve celebrated some victories of solidarity this year. After the Sandy Hook school shootings, all kinds of citizens– from urban to suburban to small town—came together in solidarity to pass strong gun control legislation in Connecticut. Solidarity among Jewish women and their allies in Israel and across the globe calling for women to be allowed to pray out loud as a group, wear tallises at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, and for men and women to be allowed to pray together there – this solidarity is what is leading Israeli government officials to finally make that vision a reality. Solidarity among gay and straight individuals and families is what is leading our country towards a future of marriage equality for all.
Moses spoke out of the Torah this morning, saying, “You stand this day, all of you, before the Lord your God – the heads of your tribes, your elders and officers, every one of you – men, women, children, and the strangers in your camps, from the one who chops your wood to the one who draws your water – to enter into the covenant which the Lord your God makes with you this day.”[9] All of us – from the woodchopper to the head of the tribe – are part of the same community –a community in covenant with God with a vision of becoming a Beloved community.
Unfortunately, even given the victories we’ve experienced here and there, the overall sense in this country that we are all part of one community is deteriorating rapidly. Studies have shown that in the past 30 years, the rate of empathy among American young people –has gone down by 75%![10] Some scholars posit that there is a link between this loss of empathy and the deterioration of social connections. We are more isolated, we don’t participate in groups like bowling leagues, political parties and PTA’s.
This lack of empathy engenders a “mind your own business” ethos, where I am no longer responsible for acknowledging or easing another person’s suffering. Solidarity slips away.
A highly symbolic sign of this came this Spring when the Supreme Court overturned major provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.These provisions required jurisdictions with a history of blocking voting of minorities to get approval before making changes to their voting policies. The decision is probably fair in theory, given that much has changed since 1965, and the list of jurisdictions under this provision is likely no longer up to date. However, this decision presents an enormous challenge to the critical project of enfranchising all Americans.
Today, our country is a place where baseless fear of fraud has become justification for Voter ID laws that make it harder for minorities, the elderly and the poor to access their right to vote in some states.
We are becoming a suspicious society-a “keep to yourself society” rather than a beloved community of solidarity.
We are in many ways a fearful community – a community where a young Black man can’t walk down the street in his own neighborhood without worrying that someone might fear that he is up to no good.
Can you imagine living in a country of solidarity where all adults saw it as their responsibility to know the kids in their neighborhoods for the sake of the kids’ safety? What if George Zimmerman had reached out to Trayvon Martin to say, “Hi – my name is George – what’s your name?” Rather than to assume that Trayvon was a person to be feared?
Can you imagine living in a country where we all are “anchored in the Lord” like Antoinette – where we know a sense of solidarity with all of our fellow citizens – strangers and friends? A country where agape love flows freely?
As Jews, we believe that it is possible to create that community. Today, the holiest day on our calendar, we are those Israelites, standing on the other side of the Jordan. We stand together, in all of our diversity, as one community – and we are poised to enter that Promised Land where we are instructed to build a Beloved community in covenant with the Divine.
Over the millennia, our Jewish sages and teachers have developed the tools to help us build that community. In our Jewish mystical or kabbalistic tradition, we find our own version of agape love. It is known as “shefa” – pure Divine love that flows from God into the universe at every moment, infusing all of creation with life. According to our tradition, we can, through spiritual practice, cultivate divine characteristics within ourselves, in order to become conduits for that shefa so that Divine love can flow more easily into our lives and into the world. These characteristics are called middot and include qualities such as patience, equanimity, and compassion.
Practices such as meditation, prayer, chanting, Torah study, and acts of compassion and generosity, can help us to strengthen those qualities and balance out our tendencies towards fear, anger, and hatred. Fear and anger are real – we all have them inside of us. But we can work with those qualities so that we might experience and share more love. This synagogue is a place where you can engage in those spiritual practices. If you haven’t made prayer or meditation or study a regular practice, I invite you to try it this year.
We also make ourselves into vessels for that divine flow when we act with compassion and generosity. The food we bring to the Shoreline Pantry, the hours you can volunteer to cook and serve at the soup kitchens in Deep River and Chester, the furniture and house wares you can donate to furnish permanent housing for the homeless, the solidarity you show when you participate in our advocacy campaigns, whether on the issue of healthcare or gun violence or racial equality in the justice system. These are all ways that we, as the kabbalists say, “draw down the shefa” –draw down that divine flow of love. If you want to be a part of these efforts, please let our Social Action Chair Andy Schatz know.
Every year on Yom Kippur we face that choice between life and death – blessing and curse.
Every year, we are Antoinette, sitting in that school office – facing that would-be shooter and his gun.
This year we can anchor ourselves in love over fear.
This year we can become vessels for Divine blessing.
This year we can build that Beloved community.
[1]http://www.ajc.com/videos/news/bookkeeper-talks-about-coming-face-to-face-with/v9ZDr/
[2] Deuteronomy 30:19-20
[3] http://www.ajc.com/videos/news/bookkeeper-talks-about-coming-face-to-face-with/v9ZDr/
[4] Ibid.
[5]http://www.sistersofmercy.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=195&Itemid=202#sthash.tP1lu98n.dpuf
[6] Isaiah 58:1-14
[7] http://www.thekingcenter.org/king-philosophy
[8] Ibid.
[9] Deuteronomy 29:9-12
[10] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-me-care
