Divrei Derech

You Are Standing Here Today, All of You, Yom Kippur Morning, 5780

As we wrapped up our time at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Cincinnati Campus in 1995, Laura and I and all our classmates received coaching on the kinds of questions we should expect to hear during the interview process for prospective rabbinic positions.

What is your favorite Torah portion and why?

Hmmm…

Part of me wanted to respond… it’s like children… how can you choose your favorite?  …but knowing that it was really meant to be an opening for us to teach some Torah, I was going to need to hone in on a particular passage.

It didn’t take too long for me to settle on Nitzavim, toward the end of Deuteronomy and also the one from which we take excerpts for our Yom Kippur morning reading.

אַתֶּ֨ם נִצָּבִ֤ים הַיּוֹם֙ כֻּלְּכֶ֔ם לִפְנֵ֖י יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֵיכֶ֑ם

You stand this day, all of you, before Adonai your God…

One of the important clues in traditional Torah interpretation is to observe the effect of a seemingly unnecessary word.  “You are standing here today, all of you…”

The ‘You’ at the beginning of the sentence is plural, ‘Y’all.’  Everyone is being addressed, so the added ‘all of you’ does not seem necessary…

but in societies in which certain people, certain classes of people are left out as a given, we might need to confirm… ‘really?! all of us?’

כֻּלְּכֶ֔ם … ’Yes, all of you.’

You are standing here today, all of you before God, tribal heads, elders and officers, all the men of Israel… small children, women, foreigners in your midst, wood choppers and water drawers.

Nitzavim remembers the normally forgotten and purposefully spells them out.

Everyone is here to receive Torah. 

Everyone is worthy.

Everyone has a voice.

Everyone deserves to be heard.

All of you

This year in the sermonic cycle, I’ve been exploring how we lift up our voices.  We begin with a recognition that we need to lift up our voice.  Sh’ma koleinu… hear our voice!  Like the boy in Harry Chapin’s song, we cannot sit silent or we will be mired in endless fields of red flowers all the same size, all the same shape.  

Not only is it important to realize that we must speak out, we must also identify our particular way of speaking out whether it’s literally through our voice or whether it’s through other talents such as visual arts, music, educating, organizing…

Another important step is to identify the purpose of speaking out.

In the world of community organizing that I’ve seemed to find myself involved in, I’ve found that those of us with privilege, those of us who enjoy relatively comfortable lives, have the opportunity to speak for those whose voices don’t often enough get to be heard, to use our privilege to bring to the table those who don’t normally get the opportunity and to help them lift up their own voices.

There’s a new verb… to be ‘othered’  

Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines ‘othered’ and ‘othering’ as:

“to treat or consider (a person or a group of people) as alien to oneself or one’s group (because of different racial, sexual, or cultural characteristics)

To be made into the other

‘Othered’

The word is new but the action is not

It’s not new for Jews

It’s happened to us for centuries

It’s not new for people of color

It’s not new for the poor

It’s not new for women

Or those too young to vote

Even with privilege, there are times when we need to lift our voice for our own needs.  As I spoke about on Rosh Hashanah morning, those of us who so value the need for the existence of the modern State of Israel are often forced into speaking up for it.

Just a reminder…

Anti-semitism is rampant today.

Let’s turn back to that passage in Nitzavim for a moment…  

וְגֵ֣רְךָ֔ אֲשֶׁ֖ר בְּקֶ֣רֶב מַחֲנֶ֑יךָ

‘The foreigner in the midst of your camp’

‘The other’

Anti-semitism makes us into the other.

And as ‘others,’ we benefit from standing together as a community and together with the other ‘others.’  

There are so many voices of hate out there right now yet everywhere I look I see voices of love and community.  We just have to lift those voices up above the tumult.

I made a big decision this past year.  For years, I’ve wanted to participate in the Fresno Rainbow Pride Parade.  The LGBTQ community continues to face horrible discrimination throughout the world… even in America… even in California.

Targeted for hate crimes and violence.  Continually made into the ‘other.’

I am proud of Reform Judaism’s history at the forefront of LGBTQ inclusion.  I am proud that this congregation has absolutely supported this value.  I am saddened that out of hundreds of churches in Fresno, we were one of maybe half a dozen religious organizations marching in Fresno’s Rainbow Pride Parade.  Less than one percent of Fresno’s religious organizations were willing to stand up and say you are welcome in our community.

Flowers are not only red… there are so many colors in the rainbow…

Fresno’s Pride Parade is relatively small but no less important than its much larger cousins throughout the country.  Walking down Olive Ave. with our banner emblazoned with Rainbow Israeli flags, our name, Temple Beth Israel and our tag line: Creating Pathways to Jewish Living in the Central Valley, we were making a clear statement… these pathways are open to you who have too often been told you are not welcome.

Several people along the route thanked us for being there.  Thanked us for affirming their existence.

I’ve heard the stories here.  I’ve heard the stories everywhere I’ve been of the communities and clubs that were not open to Jews, country clubs, housing developments.  When I got involved in AZA, part of the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization, I learned about the high school fraternities of the first half of the twentieth century.  Jews weren’t allowed in those clubs and AZA and BBG were our answer.

Today in Fresno, the Jewish community generally feels welcome so it is our turn to welcome those who still feel excluded.

When I see the rainbow flags, I see the boy who wished to paint in all the colors of the rainbow.

When I see the rainbow flags, I see the ethnic and religious diversity that should be celebrated.

אַתֶּ֨ם נִצָּבִ֤ים הַיּוֹם֙ כֻּלְּכֶ֔ם

You are standing here today, all of you…

Finding our voices and lifting them up

אַתֶּ֨ם נִצָּבִ֤ים הַיּוֹם֙ 

You are standing here today

And marching with us in June

אַתֶּ֨ם נִצָּבִ֤ים הַיּוֹם֙ 

You are standing here today

And speaking out… today and everyday 

For voices not often heard

For the children painting in all the colors of the rainbow…

For our brothers and sisters in Israel, striving to live in peace…

For the women, the children, the choppers of wood and the drawers of water

For the strangers in our midst

For all those who have been made to feel ‘other’

We are standing here today… 

…working to live in peaceful coexistence…

This Is Why I Sing, Erev Yom Kippur 5780

(w/Dan Nichols)

This past June, we sat with Rabbi Laura and Rabbi Lisa on the patio of Cuvaison Winery up in Napa.  Some delectable wines paired beautifully with aged cheeses, dried fruit and nuts and we began to wonder about the tasting notes for songs… what pairings would best serve particular compositions and what notes of flavor arose from the notes of the music.

And then, as you released your latest album, we were pleased to see the tasting notes for each song as they appeared.

Here are the notes for the song entitled ‘This Is Why I Sing…’

Brave and open, this vintage is influenced by the Leonard Cohen tradition of whine making: sparse and rough-hewn with notes of French-press coffee and toast.  Pairs well with room temperature Wensleydale and over-ripe bing cherry.

I realize the notes are somewhat tongue in cheek but intentionally or not, I think you landed on some truth.

I should say that the spelling for wine in wine making is ‘w-h-i-n-e.’  And maybe ‘whine’ with the ‘h’ can also be described as a ‘plaintive cry’ which is how I commonly describe Kol Nidrei because I found this song to pair perfectly with both the prayer Kol Nidrei as well as the message of the evening.

Without consulting, I had chosen this song to pair with the message for tonight, then, I was pleasantly shocked when you told me that this was your own personal Kol Nidrei.  It seems that I also tasted the essence of toasted offering you infused into this deep blend.

Would you offer some thoughts on why this song is your Kol Nidrei and then, please, share it with us…

 

Dan’s shared thoughts about the creation of the song...

then sang it for us...

 

For the scrape and the pull of the nail on the string

The wish for something better a heavy sigh brings

For a cracked wooden box roaring galaxies

And fingertip secrets calluses set free

 

For the call and response of the hope I hear-

Thanks and the trust in a God I don’t fear

For my relief in a Holy One of Blessing

And my belief in a lifetime of wrestling

 

This is why I sing, this is why I sing

All I have I bring, this is why I sing

 

For the flesh and the blood of a body built to feel

The daily desire to know something real

For the quiet of twilight, the raw winter air

The riot of thunder, your hand in my hair

 

For whispers and screams and the joys of release

The days and the dreams in a home I know peace

For the love from someone who knows enough to leave

And the gift of a life that gives more than I need

 

This is why I sing, this is why I sing

All I have I bring, this is why I sing

 

For the sun and the moon and the shadow I cast

For all my tomorrows and yesterdays passed

For the rhythm of heartbeat that means I belong

The touch of a feather, the silence in song

 

This is why I sing, this is why I sing

All I have I bring, this is why I sing

 

Thank you

I spoke on Rosh Hashanah about lifting up our voices.  We called upon the voice of Harry Chapin whose song Flowers Are Red speaks of the child who wished to paint flowers in every color of the rainbow while his teacher quashed his spirit with the refrain…

Flowers are red, green leaves are green,

There’s no need to see flowers any other way than the way they always have been seen.  That child had been silenced.

 

To lift our voice we must find our voice.

For some of us, that literally means our voice.

Dan and I have learned from masters like Pete Seeger, Harry Chapin, Leonard Cohen and many more who use their voices to lift up issues, to move people to act, marching to the rhythm…

The boy in Chapin’s Flowers Are Red lost the voice of his art…

Others have not.

Great visual artists move people by creating messages that move us through imagery…

One of my favorite artists was not known for fine art…

I learned to read with Theodore Geisel.  His books were fun but at six years old, I had no idea how powerful some of his statements were, statements against authoritarianism, statements on sustainability, statements that are just as powerful and necessary today as they were when he published them.  Better known by his nome de plume, Dr. Seuss published Yertle the Turtle in 1958 and The Lorax in 1971.  The respective issues he lifted up are as important today as they were then.

Artists, visual and musical, lift up their voices as a matter of course but they are not alone…

I am convinced that no matter what you do, your gifts can be lifted up for good, for justice.

Rosa Parks was a seamstress.

She lifted her voice by sitting down.

Pete Seeger’s gone.

Harry Chapin’s gone.

Leonard Cohen’s gone.

Dr. Seuss… gone.

Rosa Parks… gone.

and Rabbi Tarfon is gone.

But Rabbi Tarfon left us with a very important reminder…

לֹא עָלֶיךָ הַמְּלָאכָה לִגְמֹר, וְלֹא אַתָּה בֶן חוֹרִין לִבָּטֵל מִמֶּנָּה.

Lo Alecha… _{(Pirkei Avot 2:15)}

It is not your responsibility to complete the task but neither are you free to desist from it.

I quote this passage a lot… because we need it a lot.

All of those great people are gone but we are still here.  Not one of them completed their task but every one of them engaged in it.

When we are feeling overwhelmed with the weight of need for the repair of our world, I find it so comforting to know that it is not our responsibility to fix it all.  Our heroes are mortal but their voices are not.

…because their voices reverberate in our own.

They pass the baton… and there is a unique baton for every one of them and for every one of us.

 

Pete passed me a banjo.

Harry passed Dan a guitar.

There are several young members of our congregation who were given Dr. Seuss’ paint brush.

What is the baton you carry and how will you wield it?

 

Tonight Thomas, Dan and Michael all lifted up the spirit of Kol Nidrei, a powerful baton we have handed through the centuries.

Kol Nidrei… the ‘whine’ of our people, the plaintive cry, the voice of generations vowing to do better and while each generation has yet to cross the finish line, we continue to pass the baton, the guitar, the cello, the paintbrush, our humble human voice…

I’m not Pete Seeger.

I’m not Dr. Seuss.

I’m not Rosa Parks.

But I’m standing here with the baton and searching for my particular way to move it forward.

I have no doubt that each and every one of us have our own unique way to carry that baton, to lift up our voice, to contribute to our sacred task of Tikkun Olam, to make the world just a little bit better.

On Rosh Hashanah, I focused upon the need to lift up our voice.  Tonight, and throughout this Yom Kippur, I would like us to take time to meditate upon identifying and celebrating our own particular gift, our own voice as it were.

Or… in Rabbi Tarfon’s language, our first task is to find our voice, to find the gift with we we are blessed and then our task is to offer it up.

In the Book of Numbers, we read that on Yom Kippur we were to bring an elevation offering which included a bull, a ram and seven one-year-old lambs._{(Numbers 29:7-11)}  In Leviticus, the offering for Yom Kippur is described as an offering of fire._{(Leviticus 26:23-32)}  They pair together nicely, the elevation offering and the fire offering.

What burns inside you that you must lift up?

What makes your heart sing?

Dan reprise

Israel Wrestling, Rosh Hashanah Morning, 5780

Jews are good at arguing.  It’s been built into our DNA for centuries.

Just look at who we are and what we are called.

The term Jew originally comes from one of our patriarch Jacob’s sons, Judah, which then became the name for one of the tribes and then eventually became the designation for the entire Southern Kingdom, while the Northern Kingdom was called Israel.

The term Israel was given to that same Jacob after he spent an evening in torment.  He wrestled with the angel in preparation to face the brother from whom he stole the birthright.  Jacob and the angel wrestled through the evening and as the sun began to rise, the angel relented but Jacob would not release the angel until the angel blessed him.  He was blessed with a new name.  The angel told him, “You shall now be known as Israel for you have wrestled with God and prevailed.”

We are Jews from Judah and we are Israel the God wrestlers.

And today we still wrestle with Israel.

For rabbis, many of us wrestle with whether or not to speak about Israel during the High Holy Days.  It’s not because we lack passion for Israel.  For most of us it’s quite the opposite. 

I thought a lot about why I generally prefer not to focus a High Holy Day sermon on Israel and I’m really not sure why I avoid it.

Perhaps it’s because so many people have such strong feelings and those feelings can cause tension between us and I prefer not to tempt such a provocation at a time when I want us to all come together.

Here in the Central Valley, we’re so far removed from the flashpoint of Middle East politics.

As illustrations go, it’s a pretty crass source, but I keep seeing the scene from Adam Sandler’s movie You Don’t Mess with the Zohan.  Palestinians and Israelis living and working side by side in New York.

"The point is, we are thousands of miles away from all this hate…”

“…and we live together just fine.”

“We do.”

“We do.”

“Come on, people.”

“Where is the hate?”

One says, “I resent.”

“What? What do you resent?"

“People don’t like us."

“Come on, it’s not easy for us."

The other side responds, “People don’t like us too.”

“Why?"

“Because they think we are you.”

"We do look alike.”

“You got to admit this.  Come on.”

 

And here, thousands of miles farther even than New York, we normally have the luxury of staying out of the details of the Middle East conflict.

This year we didn’t have a choice.

The subject was forced upon us.  Not on our terms.

GVWire, the local media outlet owned by Darius who also owns Granville Homes, brought in a speaker to address the Israeli Palestinian conflict.  Unfortunately, this speaker is rather problematic.  Left wing groups, highly critical of Israel’s behavior felt the need to distance themselves from this speaker because she has trafficked in and refused to disavow hateful rhetoric.  She is too left for the left.

It appeared that the most thorough vetting of the speaker was done by an umbrella organization called ‘The U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.’  In their statement addressing this speaker, the organization begins…

“The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation is a coalition of hundreds of US-based groups working for Palestinian rights.  In 2012, the Steering Committee of the US Campaign, elected at our annual conference, formed a working group to address racism within the coalition as part of our ongoing effort to become an anti-racist organization.  The work of this group resulted in the adoption of our anti-racism principles in 2013 and the establishment of procedures for handling instances of racism and bigotry within the coalition.”

Their statement goes on to address the process with this particular speaker.  I’ve edited it to avoid repeating her or her particular organization’s name… because I choose on our holy day to focus more on Israel and not on particular Israel haters.  Anyway, the statement says…

“After a thorough review and a correspondence, the committee has concluded that this individual’s repeated statements and actions, often as the Executive Director of her organization, did indeed violate our anti-racism principles. Her responses led us to believe that these violations will continue in the future.  Based on the report of the review committee, our Steering Committee voted in favor of removing this individual and her organization from our coalition.”

The US Campaign thoroughly notated their research and, as they predicted, some of the violations she was cited for did, in fact, continue.

Here locally, several of us worked together behind the scenes to minimize the impact of the speaker.  From our board, Josh's help with research was invaluable.  I checked in with our president, Bill, and with Esti, the current president of our Jewish Federation as well as Phyllis, the Federation director and several others.  We determined it was best to discourage people from attending the presentation in order to keep it from getting additional press.  In the meantime, I met personally with Darius.  We asked him to make a clear statement condemning anti-Semitism.  He did.  We asked him to offset this presentation by bringing in a speaker who is not mired in hateful controversy.  More on that shortly.

I continue to wrestle over the question of when and whether to speak about Israel but it was a pretty clear choice this year.  And when it comes to speaking about Israel during the High Holy Days, I ask myself what is a spiritually appropriate avenue for this discussion and how does it fit within my overarching theme this year of finding and lifting up our voice?

As we learned these last few weeks, we don’t always get to choose when we talk about Israel and what subject area we get to focus on in the discussion.

Some of us have spent much time there, years even…

Some of us have never been.

Some of us feel deeply connected to Israel.

And some of us do not.

Some feel ambivalent about Israel.

Some do not really think about it at all.

Most, if not all of us, get forced into responding to questions… and accusations about Israel whether we have considered the questions or not.

We’re forced to wrestle.

For many of us, our relationship with Israel might be best described as… ‘it’s complicated.’

There are times we are moved to speak up and times we sit silent.  There are those who say that our patriarch Abraham, the grandfather of Jacob, merited his position of being the first Jew for speaking up, for arguing with God to save people whom he did not know and, yet, in this morning’s Torah reading, he remains silent when asked to sacrifice his own son.

We have wrestled with this passage for centuries.  

Today it stands for me as a stark reminder that we don’t always lift up our voice. 

I try to follow Abraham’s example when he did speak up.  Abraham may have been silent regarding his son but we can lift our voices for his grandson… Jacob… who we know as Israel.

In order to speak for Israel, we need to know Israel.

It’s why we spend an entire year of our religious school curriculum on Israel.  It’s why Rabbi Laura and I spent an entire year in Israel during our rabbinic training. It’s why we celebrate Israel’s independence every year together as a community.  It’s why we continue to take groups to Israel because there is no better way to know Israel than to experience it firsthand. 

Here in the Central Valley where the Middle East conflict is rarely in our headlines and where many people including within the Jewish community have so little knowledge or experience or even interest in Israel, I have found the most important role for me is to raise awareness and even more important to raise interest.  

I love Israel and I love to share my passion for Israel.

While I hope that everyone will have the opportunity to make the journey at least once, there are plenty of ways to get to know Israel without leaving the Central Valley…

I asked Rabbi Laura, whose expertise in Israel education earned her a doctorate this year, to provide us with an introductory list of Israel resources.  She has provided us with a good start in books, websites and podcasts.  Books on the list include classics like one of my favorites, In the Land of Israel by Amos Oz and Israel: Echo of Eternity by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel as well as much more recent works such as a collection of writings edited by Rabbis Stanley Davids and Lawrence Englander entitled The Fragile Dialogue: New Voices of Liberal Zionism.

Rabbi John Rosove’s blog recounts a wealth of deep reflections on Israel.  He is the immediate past co-chair of ARZA, the Association of Reform Zionists of America.  His soon to be published book will be titled Why Israel [and its Future] Matters - Letters of a Liberal Rabbi to His Children and the Millenial Generation.  It is Rabbi Rosove we have connected with GVWire to come in to town to bring a much more balanced and responsible discussion to the subject of the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict and I’m glad to announce that he will be in Fresno on Monday night, December 9th.  As soon as GVWire gives us the place and exact time, we’ll get the information out to the community.

Another highly respected Reform Jewish leader making bold and powerful statements on Israel with regularity is Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the past president of URJ, the Union for Reform Judaism.  I was pretty much done writing my words for this morning then, yesterday, I saw Rabbi Yoffie’s opinion piece in the Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz entitled, What on Earth Can American Rabbis Say About Israel This Rosh Hashanah?

Thanks Rabbi Yoffie, you couldn’t have published this a week or two ago?

I encourage you to read it.  He argues that Reform Jews should serve as the ‘sensible center’ of the Israel discussion and I’ll read his concluding passages…

“What does it mean for Reform Jews to be the sensible center?

It means that we oppose the messianic settlers and the occupation-forever Jews. Because we know that Israel cannot forever enslave another people.

It means that we oppose the give-back-the-territories-now-no-matter-what Jews.  Because we know that absent an arrangement for real security, ending the occupation immediately could mean chaos and endless terror for Israelis and Palestinians alike.

It means that we ask of ourselves, and what we offer the State of Israel, is tough-minded realism, honest criticism, and insistence on religious freedom for all. And above all, non-stop striving for peace.

And it means that while Israel is neither perfect nor innocent, we have not lost our faith in Israel, and never will.  And therefore we forever pledge to Israel our unconditional love.

Not uncritical love, of course, but unconditional love. So help us God.”

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-what-on-earth-can-rabbis-say-about-israel-this-rosh-hashana-1.6433074

 

As Jacob earned his title Israel by wrestling with God, we will continue to wrestle with Israel.

But you can’t wrestle without engaging.  I spent quite a few years in the dojo.  We did a lot of grappling and I can tell you with complete certainty that it is impossible to wrestle without making contact, without wrapping yourself together.  And the beauty of the training we did was that it was never in anger.  Oh, we wrestled to the floor.  It was often painful.  We left bruised, sometimes bleeding.  

I’ll never forget the grappling during my black belt test.  At the end, I was completely, utterly wiped out, like Jacob at the end of his night of wrestling with the angel.  And when the grappling was finished, the sensei who whipped my tush, gave me a big hug.

I realized it’s a beautifully perfect analogy.

I’ve always pictured Jacob holding the angel in a headlock before agreeing to release the angel who tapped out as the sun began to rise.  But Jacob would not release the angel without the blessing, the blessing that earned him the name Yisrael.

Yes, I wrestle with Israel.  Sometimes it can be painful, it is always a blessing… and we never leave each other without a hug.

Sh'ma Koleinu, Erev Rosh Hashanah 5780

Something tells me we are in prophetic times.

The great prophets of Torah, the great prophets of human history, rose up in times of turbulence and these are times of turbulence.

I hear voices… not that way.

I hear words of wisdom rising above the turbulent waves.

Some of those voices come from Torah.

Some of the voices come from luminaries of our age.

Some of the voices come from musical lyrics.

Some come from teenagers testifying to the United Nations.

Some come from actors speaking from the stage.

Some are recent.

Some are not.

Some come back to me over and over again like words from our prayers or words from vinyl as it spins round and round on the turntable…

Dan Nichols sings...

The little boy went first day of school

He got some crayons and started to draw

He put colors all over the paper

For colors was what he saw

And the teacher said.. What you doin' young man

I'm paintin' flowers he said

 

She said,

It's not the time for art young man

And anyway flowers are green and red

There's a time for everything young man

And a way it should be done

You've got to show concern for everyone else

For you're not the only one

 

And she said

Flowers are red young man

Green leaves are green

There's no need to see flowers any other way

Than the way they always have been seen

 

But the little boy said

There are so many colors in the rainbow

So many colors in the morning sun

So many colors in the flower and I see every one

 

Well the teacher said

You're sassy

There's ways that things should be

And you'll paint flowers the way they are

So repeat after me

 

And she said

Flowers are red young man

Green leaves are green

There's no need to see flowers any other way

Than the way they always have been seen

 

There are certain musical passages that I turn to a lot and there is something about this song from Harry Chapin that feels prophetic to me.  I get choked up every time I hear it.  The boy just wants to be who he is.  His soul sings the colors of the rainbow while his teacher forces him back into line.  Flowers are red… all looking exactly the same.  Be quiet and get back into line.

It was back to school night in my older sister’s first grade class.  There on the bulletin board, proudly displayed for all the parents to see… every flower was red, every leaf was green, all cut to the same size.  I got the benefit when my mother saved me a couple years later from having to be in that same teacher’s class.

And how many of us had the same experience in school?  Taught to fall into line.  Do as everyone else is doing.  Repeat back the words of the teacher… flowers are red, green leaves are green.  There’s no need to see flowers any other way than the way they always have been seen.

And then the lyrics of our liturgy rise in my head.

They’re both powerful and plaintive…

Sh’ma koleinu…

Dan sings the first few words of Helfman's Sh'ma Koleinu...

Hear our voice, Adonai our God, have compassion on us.

“Hear our voice, Adonai our God, and have mercy upon us…”

 

There are all sorts of rabbinic tales about the words of children and the beautiful, honesty of those words.  There’s a classic about a child who could not speak but at what seemed to be the most inopportune moment in the services, the child pulled a flute from his pocket and played it.  When the community complained to the rabbi, he responded that it was the notes of the boy’s flute, the prayer of the boy’s heart, that was the voice heard on high by God that morning.

Sh’ma koleinu, hear our voice.

The boy painting flowers in all the colors of the rainbow.  The child bearing his soul through the notes on his flute.  The sixteen year old girl, beseeching leaders of the world to listen…

In fact, the history of this prayer, Sh’ma koleinu can be a cautionary tale in and of themselves.  Let’s take a brief, retrospective educational moment to understand how they arrived on our page today.

It’s important to keep in mind that originally our prayers were not fixed at all.  The earliest recorded prayers in Torah such as Hannah’s silent petition to God for a child were completely unscripted.  Up until approximately two thousand years ago prayer was all improvised.  People felt free to offer their own thoughts and prayers to God.  There was no particular set order.  Over the course of several hundred years, people shared their ideas, other people, with some level of authority, felt that particular prayers ought to be said, and a fixed order started to develop. The word for this ‘fixed order’ is siddur, the Hebrew for ‘prayerbook’. The prayerbook was taking shape at the beginning of the first century but still very much in flux.  The traditional siddur as we know it today has been fixed for just about a hundred years.

And there on page 278 of this machzor, our High Holy Day prayerbook, you’ll find this prayer… Sh’ma Koleinu…

The original version of the prayer comes from our weekday Amidah.  It is number 16 of the 19 daily benedictions in this section of prayer that is the core supplications of our prayer service.  The entire section is also known as the T’fillah, simply meaning – ‘prayer’, because the ancient rabbis considered it the prayer par excellence, the time for our personal thoughts and supplications to pour forth.  And this particular prayer, number 16, is also known simply as T’fillah, because after running through each of the possible petitions you might offer for understanding, for repentance or forgiveness and such, this prayer was officially intended to be the ‘insert your personal prayer here’ position.  You began with the formula… Sh’ma koleinu, Adonai Eloheinu – hear our voice, Adonai our God, have mercy and compassion upon us and with that compassion accept our prayer… and then you would follow that with whatever was on your mind that had not already been covered by the previous petitions.

In fact, that was about all there was to the original prayer.  The text quoted in the Jerusalem Talmud is: Sh’ma b’koleinu Adonai Eloheinu, b’kol t’filateinu v’racheim aleinu ki Eil chanun v’rachum Atah, Baruch Atah Adonai, Shomeia t’fillah – Hear our voice, Adonai our God, and the voice of our prayer, and have mercy upon us, for You are a kind and merciful God.  Blessed are You, Adonai, Who hears prayer.  That’s all there was to it.

The final line of the prayer is known as the chatimah, or signature.  It’s the Baruch Atah Adonai line at the end of the prayer and it was just before that signature, that we were supposed to insert our own petitions, our private prayers.  

This tradition of inserting your own prayer is already recognized as authoritative by the beginning of the third century.  The Talmud, in masechet B’rachot, tells us, “A person may ask for his own need in the benediction Sh’ma Koleinu.” (B. Ber. 31a)

But, it seems, we get lazy.  We aren’t feeling terribly creative today.  We skip the improvisational section.  We let someone else fill in the blanks for us, and before we know it, we’ve forgotten that there ever were blanks there in the first place.  We’ve forgotten that flowers could be anything but red.

And if we’re not taking the time to voice our private prayers, perhaps we may also not be lifting our voices in the public sphere.  Lifting them up for the righteousness that our prophets reminded us to do.

So, it is my job to remind us.  Flowers are not just red, and the prayers on the pages are not the only prayers you’re supposed to offer.  

And lifting up our voices is not reserved for the synagogue alone.

If we are calling out for God to have compassion upon us and save us then we must at least meet God halfway.

When you ask the teacher for help, the good teacher, not the one who tells you that flowers are only red, the good teacher will help bring you along, coach you through the process… the good teacher will encourage you to paint in all the colors of the rainbow.  The good teacher hears you singing your song and reminds us all to listen.

Sh’ma Koleinu - Hear our voice

Think about it.  When must we not remain silent?  When must we lift up our voice?

I’m not going to tell you when.  Remember, the teacher also doesn’t just simply give you the answer.  We each have our own individual voices and we each have our own particular moments we must lift them up.  There are definitely times when we sit there thinking… “should I say something… or should I remain quiet?”

Think about that child whose flowers should represent all the colors of the rainbow.  Think about the amazing courage of Greta Thunberg.  She sailed across the sea to testify to the United Nations regarding climate change.  Talk about a prophetic call.  She is fighting for us to have flowers in the years to come.

Sometimes we have to sing out.  We have to step up… or step out of line…

How about the actor Alex Borstein?

She illustrated this point so powerfully just over a week ago as she accepted an Emmy award for her portrayal of Susie Myerson, the manager in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.  This comes from Esquire Magazine’s report on the award ceremony…

"Borstein’s speech called on her grandmother’s experience during the Holocaust, an especially powerful message considering her show features so many powerful Jewish women characters.  Her incredible anecdote of resilience and strength was among the night’s most incredible moments. As Bornstein said on stage:

My grandmother turned toward a guard—she was in line to be shot into a pit—and said, “What happens if I step out of line?” and he said, “I don’t have the heart to shoot you, but somebody will.  And she stepped out of line.  And for that, I am here.  And for that, my children are here.  So step out of line, ladies.  Step out of line.”"

In the coming services, we will further explore what it means to find and lift up our voice.  Tonight is meant to serve as the introduction to following messages.  We don’t always get to choose when we speak up.  Recently in our community, the subject of Israel has been taken out of our context and required a response.  I’ll elaborate on that tomorrow.  Israel is one of the many subjects that needs our voice and as we find our voice, we need to figure out how and when to lift it up.  That subject we’ll discuss further on Yom Kippur.

As we approach this coming year, let us ask ourselves, how will we lift up our voices?  

When will we unleash all the colors of the rainbow?

When must we step out of line…

The neatly lined up rows of red flowers at Back to School Night…

Step out of line…

The voices telling us to hush…

Make your voices heard.

Sh’ma Koleinu

Hear our voice, Adonai our God.  Have compassion and accept our prayer…

Dan sings a selection from Helfman's Sh’ma Koleinu