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Kol Nidre: Recreating a "We"

10/07/2022 10:16:39 AM

Oct7

Rabbi Ilana Goldhaber-Gordon

I received an invitation recently, from someone I hadn't heard from in a few years.

Nihal Sahan. She's one of the few staff members of Pacifica Institute, a Turkish cultural center in Santa Clara.

A few years ago, CBJ and Pacifica had a lovely little Muslim-Jewish dialogue group going. But like so many of our more tenuous social bonds - our group disappeared during the pandemic. 

Now, out of the blue an invitation from Nihal to serve on an interfaith study session panel, with a pastor and an Imam. The topic was the story of Noah and the flood. 

I was the first to speak on the panel. "In Noah's time, humanity had polluted the land with our evil ways," I said. "That description speaks to us today, as we see what we've done to our planet." Many heads in the room nodded in agreement with me. 

After the panel was over, a young man approached the dias. He spoke in a quiet voice, his face showing no emotion:

"May I ask you a question?" All three of us nodded encouragement. The Imam and I were old enough to be his parents, our Christian colleague could have been his grandfather.

"If the world were to be destroyed again," he said, almost in a murmur, "I hope it won't happen - but if it did, can someone help us build an ark and be safe?" I looked at him for a hint of a smirk. There was none. He was dead serious. 

Afterward, I thought about my own children. Not my youngest, Yaara but my older two, one 17 and one 20. And their friends. They joke about climate change, and the future of our planet. They also joke about the future of our democracy. Their rueful laughter remind me of a line by Israeli pop-singer Arik Einstein: צחקנו בשביל לא לבכות, "We laughed so as not to cry." One of my son's best friends, a Stanford undergrad, said to me once: "There's no way our democracy will still exist in 20 years." I was stunned by his certainty. 

And then I thought of the many adults I know who are seriously thinking about leaving the country...Thinking they might outrun the existential threats so many of us fear.

On Rosh Hashanah, I spoke to our community about the creation story, and the tension between Genesis chapter 1, in which humanity is given dominion over the planet, and Genesis chapter 2, in which we are commanded to protect it. I told you about a conversation with Professor Liz Hadly, an ecologist at Stanford. In her words: "We have impacted the cryosphere, the hydrosphere, the lithosphere, the atmosphere and the biosphere." Or - in plain speak - all the big systems of planet earth have been changed to human activity: the ice, the water, the land, the air, and all living things. I asked you to recognize that we cannot turn back the clock. We cannot erase the damage we have done, or even stop all further damage from happening. But as a species we have enormous power. We can use our power to - again, in Professor Hadly's words - "nudge the planet away from chaos." If we get serious about it. If we all work together. 

Tonight, I want to focus on the next few generations of Genesis: the flood, and the Tower of Babel. And what these stories teach us about the very serious predicaments we are in today, both as a nation and as a species. 

It has always amazed me that our Torah understood humanity's potential to destroy the natural world. These stories date back to the Bronze Age. Estimated global population at that time was only 50 million - on the entire planet. And yet, our ancestors were convinced that the human capacity for violence could bring destruction down on all the earth. 

To the folks at the Pacifica Institute, I offered an image of human kind polluting the land. I was shading things a little. It wasn't pollution that brought the flood; it was violence and social injustice. The rabbis of old coined a phrase מידה כנגד מידה - measure for measure - to describe their understanding of God's actions in the world. If the sins of Noah's generation were social, not environmental, then the horrible climax of the story is a perfect example of מידה כנגד מידה: a few survivors, floating alone on a rickety boat, with the ruins of their civilization submerged beneath them. That image is like a warning, shouted down through the generations. This is what happens when a culture is based on the premise of each man for himself. 

Not that social and environmental sins can be so neatly cleaved. Environmental destruction leads to violence and war. But, also, social discord leads to environmental harm. The power of our species is in our collective. We succeed when we collaborate, when we trust each other and feel invested in one another. 

As Jews, we should understand this well. How did we survive nearly 2000 years of exile and oppression? The answer is sown implicitly into every page of this book. We prayed as a "We." Not "Save me, please, my God!" Our liturgy is always, "Save us, please, our God!"

Social capital - that sense of "Us" or "We" - has to be nurtured at every level. When a person feels grounded in a family that needs and cares for them, surrounded by a community that supports them and to which they feel responsible, and connected to a nation or a people that they are proud of - that person will give more at every level. Volunteer more, donate more, show-up more. It is why multiple studies have shown that individuals who are active in a church or synagogue give more to charity and volunteer more than people who have no religious affiliation. This is true even discounting the time and money given to the church itself.

I am inspired by the work of sociologists Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garret. In their book, "The Upswing," he uses many different measures to assess American's sense of "We". Economic disparities. Bipartisan collaboration and split-ticket voting. Involvement in social clubs and churches and work unions. Even pronoun usage 0 how often does the word "I" appear in American publications, versus the word "we." And many other markers of our sense of responsibility and belonging. 

Across all these different measures and more, over the past century they found a remarkably similar pattern, what they call an "inverted U curve."

Their data start with the Gilded Age - roughly 1870 to 1900. That was a time of deep economic disparities, rampant environmental destruction, horrific racism, and overall cultural narcissism.

But we did not descend from there into apocalyptic disaster. Instead, our sense of collective responsibility climbed slowly but steadily up.

Until the 1960s, when the curve did an about face and began to fall again, bringing us steadily down to the lows of today. Putnam and Garret call this inverted U and "I-We-I" curve.

Out of all their numbers and graphs, Putnam and Garrett make a crucial argument. Almost a plea. The transition out of the Gilded Age into a half century of nearly steady progress did not happen accidentally. It was the intentional work of reformers. In their words:

"The reformers included...immigrants and elites, women and men, blacks and whites, housewives and career politicians, unionists and capitalists, college graduates and factory workers, top-down bureaucrats and bottom-up activists, Republicans and Democrats, and nearly everyone in between. The movement was so diverse as to be barely coherent and was home to contradictory impulses, but together they...put in place a stunningly diverse and sweeping set of reforms and innovations - many of which form the basis of American society as we know it today."

We did it then - he argues - and we can do it again.

BUT - we have to be willing to tolerate those "contradictory impulses." We must grasp on to the sense of "We", without demanding that it wash away anyone's sense of "I".

If Jewish prayers are written to develop our sense of "We", it is with the implicit understanding that a strong "We" is composed of many strong "I"s. This is why the foundational document of rabbinic Judaism - the Talmud - presents as a series of debates, most of which are left unresolved. We Jews understand the importance of lifting up many voices. 

After the flood, Noah and his children spread out into the land and rebuilt it. Things started to be good again. But everyone on earth spoke one language. They began to build a city and a tower, and for some reason, their efforts ticked God off. The text does not tell us why.

Dr. Judy Klitsner, in her book Subversive Sequels in the Bible, offers an explanation that emerges from a close read of the text. There are no individuals mentioned in the story of Babel. The people's desire to make a single name for all of them, and they fear differentiation. Their sin - was an attempt to erase individuality.

Going back to Putnam and Garrett's I-We-I curve - the turning point was the 1960s. Historian Todd Gitlin described the first half of that decade as "years of hope", and the second half as "days of rage". On the surface, it would seem that the sin of the '60s was exactly the opposite of the sin of Babel. Not erasing individuality, but a turn towards cultural narcissism. The "I" valued above the "We". But history is never that simple. 

My mentor and friend, Rabbi Shelley Lewis, served as a chaplain in Vietnam from 1970-71. He recently published his memoirs, and they show him to have been then as as I know him to be now: ethical, gentle, generous, and an advocate for peace. While in Vietnam, he composed a new prayer for peace for every Shabbat service. 

Before he was deployed to Vietnam, Rabbi Lewis went to visit the Hillel House at the University of Washington. Here's what happened to him on campus as he entered the Hillel building, in his own words:

"Approaching the entrance, I was confronted by several students. I was in uniform, and they could see from my insignia that I was a chaplain...I was immediately assaulted verbally: 'How can you be a man of God and still get out there and teach 'Kill! Kill! Kill?!'

I was totally unprepared and stunned into silence...There was no opportunity to explain that I, too, opposed this war. Dressed as a soldier, I represented the warmakers. I wanted to sink into the earth and disappear."

Appalling! Those students let ideology override humanity. The antiwar movement became their "We", and it left no room for the individual "I". The person didn't matter only the cause. And still today. Our causes are different now, but too often we elevate them above real human beings.

The response to the Tower of Babel was מידה כנגד מידה, measure for measure. God mixed up the people's languages. So that: לֹ֣א יִשְׁמְע֔וּ אִ֖ישׁ שְׂפַ֥ת רֵעֵֽהוּ, each person could no longer "hear" their friends' language. The building project had to be abandoned, because the workers could not communicate. Exactly what they feared came to pass: diverse nations, with diverse languages, spread out in the land. 

Perhaps fracturing is the inevitable outcome of a "We" that denies the "I". When we stop tolerating a multiplicity of views, our ties rupture. We are no longer able to hear anyone who does not speak exactly the way we do.

Over the past few years, I have engaged in ongoing conversations with several people whom I care about very much, with whom I very much disagree - on the efficacy of Covid vaccines, the reality of climate change, the insurrection of Jan 6th, even the FBI raid on our former president's home. In each case, we eventually came to an impasse. Because it turned out, we disagreed on the facts. Their trusted sources were simply different from mine. 

These experiences have shaken me to the core. I believe deeply in listening and learning from people I disagree with. But how can we learn from each other, if we don't agree on the basic facts? It's as if we are speaking a different language. And if we can't talk, how can we build a tower together, a city, a nation?

Disengagement is not the answer. Fragmented, we cannot save either our democracy or our planet. 

The only alternative is to keep trying. Even down to when we disagree on facts. If we have internalized the truth that we are all in this together, then we can learn to withstand disagreements. I can tell you that I see things differently from you. I can tell you that your facts are wrong, and still remain in respectful relationship with you. Even if we never agree. 

CBJ's respectful dialogue group is called "Tikvah", which means "hope". Because our hope for our future rests on our ability to build a strong "We" composed of many strong "I"s. Join their efforts! I am asking each of you tonight to deepen your tolerance for uncomfortable conversations. To develop your capacity to stay connected, even when you are angry and upset. To learn to disagree respectfully, rather than disengage.

Because if we cannot rebuild our sense of mutual commitment - there will be no ark to rescue us.

After the panel, when that young man asked us about building an ark, I was too dumbfounded at first to respond. Fortunately, my Christian colleague, Dr. Gerald Grudzen, spoke up. "When we all work together to find solutions, we ourselves become the ark." he said.

The answer came easily to Dr. Grudzen, because he has devoted himself to building connections across faiths. And he is exactly right. All of us working together, while maintaining our own identities - that is the ark that will rescue us. It is, in fact, the only one that ever has.

Let us each commit tonight to make 5783 a year of of strengthening our ties at every level- in our neighborhoods, our CBJ community, our country, our people, and our species, humanity, stewards of this glorious planet.

Gmar Chatimah Tovah

Correction: On Kol Nidre night, I referred to a book called "The Upswing" by Robert D. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett, and I mistakenly credited Putnam without crediting Garrett.

Thu, March 28 2024 18 Adar II 5784