Yom Kippur Morning 5775/2014 “I’m a Jew! Star of David!”

(Take kippah off head and hold it, look at it, look at the Ark, look back at the kippah)

What a beautiful concept. And a beautiful object.

I feel blessed as a rabbi to be able to spend so much time near this Ark.
I am grateful to Sol LeWitt for giving us this vibrant, living piece of art as the focal point of this sanctuary.

And what a fantastic idea – to transfer the concept to a kippah, so that folks can carry this colorful Ark with them out into the world and feel the pride of being Jewish, and being a member of this congregation, that Stephen Davis, our Temple president, likes to describe as, “ancient and cool.”

Such a blessing.

And yet, the events of this past summer cause some questions to arise when I look at this symbol now. Or when I look in our gallery at Bill Farran’s beautiful depictions of old Eastern European synagogues, after which Sol LeWitt modeled this building – synagogues that are all gone now, mostly destroyed by acts of anti-Semitism.

Our Jewish identity.
Is it a blessing? Or is it a curse? Is it a badge of pride? Or….a target.

(put kippah down)

This summer, it has been hard to not feel like we are all walking around with targets on our heads. It was terrifying to witness the anger and the anti-Semitic rhetoric spewed at demonstrations on the streets of Europe, and elsewhere, in response to the war between Gaza and Israel. In a Jewish suburb of Paris, a kosher grocery and a Jewish-owned pharmacy were torched. A synagogue near the Bastille in central Paris came under attack while its congregation took refuge inside. Demonstrators were heard chanting, “Death to Jews.”

We also had our own, comparatively small, acts of vandalism on our synagogue grounds this summer. While there was no overt anti-Semitic message associated with the vandalism, you still have to wonder, why a synagogue? And was it only a coincidence that it took place at the height of the Gaza war?

I consider myself lucky. For most of my life, anti-Semitism has not been a big issue. I grew up identifying as a Jew mostly for positive reasons – Shabbat and the holidays were warm, celebratory times in my family. Synagogue was my second home; I developed a deep love of Hebrew and Israel; and Jewish values of social justice have always been at the core of why I’m proud to be who I am.

My family lost many people in the Holocaust, including my maternal grandfather’s entire family. This is certainly a large part of my Jewish story as well. But perhaps because I’m one generation removed from the horrors of Europe, my identity was not primarily shaped by the message, “we survived, and therefore you must continue to be Jewish!” For most of my life, being Jewish has been about blessing.

Of course, there was anti-Semitism in York, PA, where I grew up. I remember an incident in which someone had stuck the head of a pig to the door of the local Conservative shul. And the Country Club of York did not admit Jews until I was in my twenties.

I was also rudely awakened to the reality of Arab anti-Semitism when I spent a month of college living in Amman, Jordan. There, some very nice, well-educated Jordanian college students informed me, when I mentioned the Holocaust, that they had been taught that the Holocaust was a lie. When I shared with them that a good portion of my own family had been murdered in the death camps, they were horrified and embarrassed. Jordan was also the first place I had ever seen fresh new copies of the medieval anti-Semitic pamphlet, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, for sale at the corner grocery store, translated into Arabic.

These experiences were very painful and lonely for me, as I was the only Jew on my study program. But I had hope back then that this ignorance would be wiped away, when there was finally true peace between Israel and its neighbors; when Israelis and Arab could finally build bridges and relationships with each other. Unfortunately today, as we watch extremist Islamist groups sprout all over the Middle East, I don’t have much hope of that happening any time soon.

This summer I experienced, and I’m sure many of you felt this, a more visceral fear of anti-Semitism than we typically experience as American Jews. We witnessed how very close to the surface the hatred lies, and how when a particular group, this time, the Palestinians in Gaza, is feeling threatened, how their fear gets projected not only onto Israel, the state, but onto the Jewish People as a whole.

In fact, I don’t believe that the anti-Semitism we witnessed this summer was really about Israel. As one French rabbi, Salamon Malka, explained, “the Israeli assault in Gaza, with its mounting toll of Palestinian civilian deaths, has given an anti-Zionist cover to attacks against Jews, spread on the streets and on the Internet by an angry fringe of France’s Muslim population.”[1] According to Malka, anti-Zionism has become a way to cover a much more deeply rooted problem of anti-Semitism, a problem that has nothing much to do with the state of Israel.

And in fact, anti-Semitism as a phenomenon usually has much more to do with the perpetrators than about anything Jews have ever done. Psychologically, anti-Semitism is typically about the perpetrator’s own feelings of self-loathing, fear and powerlessness being projected onto the blank slate of, “the Jews.” For the anti-Semite, “the Jew” is not really a person – it is a projection of his or her very unpleasant feelings

We saw this back in April, when Frazier Glenn Miller, a white supremacist, shot and killed three people at the Jewish Community Center and the Village Shalom retirement home in Overland Park, Kansas. He didn’t seem to care so much that he was actually killing Jews. In fact, his victims turned out to all be Christians who were using those Jewish communal facilities. Miller was clearly motivated by profound hatred and fear and wanted to evoke that feeling in all of us. But in the end, it didn’t really have much to do with real Jews or Judaism.

So then, how do we respond to this complex dynamic of anti-Semitism?

Typically, the initial reaction, is to hide. A few weeks ago, a Jewish couple living on the Upper East Side, was attacked by a mob carrying Palestinian flags. After the incident, Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, the principal of Ramaz, an Orthodox day school in that neighborhood, had to develop a response. His first instinct was to suggest that parents speak with their sons about covering their kippot with baseball caps and tucking in their tzitzit when they walked in the neighborhood. I don’t blame him for that initial feeling of wanting to hide. But after some thought, Rabbi Lookstein retracted his advice, saying that there is another way. He came to the conclusion that, in his words, “We have to stand up here in New York and say we are who we are, and this kind of behavior by people who try to terrorize others should never be allowed…. Our answer to anti-Semitism has to be that we stand up like exclamation points and not bend over like question marks.”http://www.jta.org/2014/09/02/news-opinion/united-states/manhattans-ramaz-school-clarifies-advice-on-concealing-kippahs

I agree with Lookstein. We should not see ourselves, this kippah, as walking targets. Rather, it can be a symbol of pride in who we are. We should not have to hide. And when we stand up, we can actually influence people and bring about change.

I don’t know whether it was pure naivete or the fact that I grew up feeling very safe as a Jew, but when I was living in Jordan for that month, I never once considered hiding my Jewish identity. Of course, there are places and times when it probably is the safe thing to do. But most of the time, our identity as Jews, or as family members of Jews, can be a powerful tool to build bridges and relationships with other people. In sharing my family’s experience of the Holocaust with those Jordanian students, I broke down some very thick walls of fear and ignorance. By being Jewish exclamations points out in the world, we can do a lot to educate people about real Jews and real Judaism, to crack open the lies of anti-Semitism, and to even bring some healing.

Our Torah portion for this morning also brings us some healing responses to the experience of anti-Semitism.

Our People are gathered to ratify the covenant with God before we finally cross over into the Promised Land. Moses addresses us there, saying, “You stand this day, all of you, before the Eternal One, your God –the heads of your tribes, your elders and officers, everyone in Israel, men, women, and children, and the strangers in your camp.”

One very important way to respond to anti-Semitism or to other experiences of being attacked is to gather together to support each other and to know that we are not alone. Even when there are not particular incidents to which to respond, just having a community and being a part of it can help us to find sanctuary in a world that can sometimes feel hostile.

But this is not a “circling the wagons” kind of gathering. The Torah portion says that we gathered together – even with the strangers in our camp. Especially in response to anti-Semitism, it is critical to build relationships with allies and neighbors who are not Jewish, in order to raise awareness, and to educate everyone, including public officials, that anti-Semitism is not only a Jewish problem.

The shootings in Kansas City showed us how we truly are all bound up together – Jews and Gentiles. We are even more interwoven these days, as so many marriages and families are composed of Jews and non-Jews. We see from this how hate for one group is really just hate, and how very much we need each other.

As we stand on the edge of the Promised Land, Moses declares, “I have set before you this day 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.”

Anti-semitism is probably not going away. Some individuals, some communities and institutions can change. In fact, my father, who was a rabbi in York, PA for 35 years, recently conducted a Jewish wedding at that same Country Club of York that used to exclude Jews. The chair of their board is now a Jewish doctor, believe it or not. Yet, we know that the curse is still here in our world.

So, the Torah teaches that we have a choice. We can choose to see our Jewish identity as a blessing or a curse. As something to hide, as something to display defiantly, or, even better, as something actually worth celebrating!

Something I love about those woodcuts of the Eastern European synagogues in our gallery is that it is not only a memorial to what was lost – it is not only about mourning our victimhood. What I see out there is a celebration of a rich heritage, a celebration of Jewish communal and spiritual life that we want to perpetuate for its own sake.

Today we worship in a wooden synagogue, inspired by those old Eastern European synagogues. And in our synagogue, we do not have to gather out of fear. Here, in this building that evokes both the ancient and cool, we can choose life and blessing. Here, we can choose to be Jews out of love –love for something larger than ourselves – love for Torah, love for Jewish values, love for community and connection and justice.

This synagogue is not only a refuge, and it surely is not a hiding place. And in fact, in this place, we are a very diverse group of people. Yes, we need to do what we can to increase our sense of physical safety – by improving the lighting and installing security cameras. But this place should never become a fortress. We should always be a living, vibrant, open place of spiritual community for all. Our kids need to know that to be Jewish is a blessing, and it should lead us to BE blessings in the world.
I believe our kids DO know this. The other day, Trina Shipuleski and David Shilling’s son Jonah ran in the front door and headed straight for this Ark. “I’m a Jew! Star of David!” he cried! (by the way, happy birthday Jonah!)

Our Star of David – on this Ark, in this ceiling – is not a target, and it is not only a badge of pride. But it is a portal. It draws us close to what is holy. And it beckons to us to look outward and upward, beyond our own history, beyond our own suffering, to something higher – to life, and to blessing.