L'shana Tova! Below you will find Rabbi Lisa's two sermons from Rosh Hashanah and two sermons from Yom Kippur.

Go to A Place for Pluralism in Israel - Rosh Hashanah Morning, Sept. 19, 2009
Go to Judaism Minus God - Erev Yom Kippur, Sept. 27, 2009
Go to A Jewish Vision for a Healthy Society - Yom Kippur Morning, Sept. 28, 2009

The Gift of Judaism: The Remedy for Life’s Givens - Erev Rosh Hashanah, Sept. 18, 2009

My most favorite book right now is titled The Five Things We Cannot Change. Therapist David Richo enumerates what he calls the five givens in life. They are givens that you and I will agree are part and parcel of the human experience. If I gave you a moment to think about it, I wonder what five givens you might come up with? There’s always Benjamin Franklin’s famous one, that we can sure of death and taxes! What are David Richo’s five givens? Here they are:
That things change, and end;
That things do not go according to plan;
That life is not always fair;
That there is pain in life;
and that people are not always loving or loyal.

Sobering, no? Who can argue with these givens? That each one of us will confront these givens is true. But how we face these inevitable moments is the question; and this is the great role of Judaism. For it strikes me, as I contemplate these givens, that although they are true, Judaism offers us a response. The response isn’t denial that they happen, or sadness that this is the condition of life, or even anger at God or people. Judaism offers us an antidote, a salve as it were, to these inevitable realities, in the form of both wisdom to understand and grow from these givens, and community by which we find the balance that makes life worthwhile and wonderful, in spite of the fact that these realities exist. As we contemplate the positive potential of a new year, we can expect that these givens may also be present. But we can also look to the future with joy and with anticipation, because we have Judaism’s two gifts: that of wisdom, and that of community, and they are the remedy as we face life’s most challenging moments.

How well we know that things change and end, the first given. How much have our lives changed since last Rosh Hashanah, as we experienced a year of economic instability and recession? Nothing really could have prepared us for the changes in life that the economic crisis has brought our way. It has raised profound questions about how we provide for ourselves and our families. Many of us have had to re-think how we earn a living, what our marketable skills are, if our retirement funds will still be there for us. We have lost jobs, we have lost savings, we have lost faith in that which we believed was stable and secure. For many of us there has been real worry, and fear. There are other changes, beyond economic ones, that have been part of this year: our health may have changed, our families may have changed. How do we respond to the adage that the “one thing we can count on is change”? We can embrace the wisdom of Rosh Hashanah which says to us that time brings change, and circumstances bring change, but both can bring renewal. Change doesn’t just happen to us, we can initiate change to our benefit. The high holy days call us to be proactive; we can change toward the person we want to be. And community is how we respond to the fact that life changes—we use community as a vehicle for embracing change by celebrating the new year, by embracing each other, wishing a l’shana tova, waving and smiling to familiar faces. We could have stayed home tonight, but one cannot celebrate life alone. Community is the antidote: we celebrate the new year by surrounding ourselves with the people with whom we walk through life. We celebrate time and seasons, with every holiday with every Bar Mitzvah or wedding, because these predictable moments where we mark the passage of time anchor us for when we face the unpredictable moments when we experience a change of circumstances. The predictable moments, like tonight, remind us to grab and embrace change. These are the moments of change that are calendared in to our life as a sacred community, through our holidays and life cycles. But when life changes unpredictably, like through economic hardships, community tells us that we are not alone, and because we are not alone, we are less afraid. It takes a community and it takes shared rituals to embrace, rather than fear, that which changes.

If it is a given that things change, than it is a given, too, that things end. We overcome the reality that all things must come to an end, by embracing community rituals so that we do not face endings alone. It is not enough to just have friends about us; we need rituals to guide us through. A few months ago I spoke with a lovely man, who had been married to a Jewish woman, although he himself was not Jewish. His wife had died; he was facing the inevitable reality that things end. But there was no antidote, there was no gift of Judaism’s wisdom as a response to the fact that death is a given of life. Standing alone in his house, there was no community: no funeral, no shiva, no coming to shul to say kaddish. When we finally gathered, weeks later at everyone’s convenience to have a memorial, there was no common language or ritual to bind friends or family together, to overcome the pain of ending. It was a sharp contrast to another moment this year, in which the gift of community and ritual had been an antidote at the time of death. It was of the young widow in our congregation who took her two sons to a shiva minyan for a man she did not know, so she could introduce herself to a newly grieving widow, simply so she could reach out within our temple community, and say, here I am. Hineni. These two families have since become good friends—that is how Judaism is the remedy to the pained moments of life.

And if David Richo thinks he first voiced his second given, that “things do not go according to plan”, then he has never heard the Yiddish saying: “A mentsh tracht und Gott lacht”-- we humans plan, and God laughs. We make plans! We plan for ourselves, our money, our retirement, our children, our businesses—our plans are how we bring structure to our time, how we bring a sense of control to our lives. What we plan for expresses what matters most to us: we plan to visit friends, to send our children to college, to travel, to buy a home. But we must know with a dose of humility that, while we plan, we are not in control of the world. It is a given, things will not go according to our plan and let’s face it: that fills us with fear. But it is because of this given, that we can be inspired by Judaism’s wisdom, which commands us: go sit in a sukkah. Sit in a sukkah not for an hour, but for a week to understand that vulnerability is a part of life. Understand that the shelters we have built around us, the things we do to make us feel secure are not impervious to nature, or the unpredictability of life. Mindfully we work to build secure lives, but we know that our houses can’t always keep us safe, our medical insurance can’t assure us of good treatment, our seatbelts can’t guarantee we won’t get hurt in a car accident, just as our college degrees can’t promise we will always be employed. Life is filled with the unpredictable. Judaism’s response to our fear that life won’t go as we planned is to remind us that that is part of the plan. And so we are taught that our lives are like a sukkah, a stable and beautiful work of art, but not an entity that can exist untouched by the world about it. Our lives, like a sukkah, are at the mercy of nature, but the secret of the sukkah is that, by not being rigid, it can sway with the wind, and usually remain standing. Sometimes sukkahs collapse, and need to be rebuilt. The wisdom of the sukkah is to help us acknowledge our vulnerability, and our flexibility in a world where we are not in control.

And that is why Judaism in great wisdom teaches us to come together as community to embrace the festival of Sukkot; the fall bounty. Because life will be random and things happen perchance, we must be mindful of the blessings that are a part of our lives at this minute, and celebrate them and share them with others. This is what we do when we sit together having Shabbat dinner in our temple sukkah, sharing a bottle of wine, deeply inhaling the citrusy smell of the etrog. Sukkot is the antidote to the reality that life is not in our control, so our community response is to be happy and celebrate the blessings that are ours at this moment in time.

Do you recall when you first learned the third given, that “Life is not fair?” I remember how young my children were when I first starting hearing that phrase: “but it’s not fair,” and we would have to give the obligatory parental response: “Life is not fair!” I know that to children, what they are saying is “hey, I didn’t get what I want.” But I also know that when we adults say “Life isn’t fair” what we really are saying is: “I’m not seeing goodness get rewarded, and bad stuff get punished.” The truth is, I think this is the given that most of us wrestle with on the deepest of levels. We know that life is not fair, we see bad and sad things happen to good people all the time. We see people suffer and struggle and we see others go unscathed. So how do we live with the fact that life is not fair? Judaism turns that harsh reality of life into action. When society seems unfair, we are taught to act for social justice. When life is not fair we are taught to speak up and speak out, inspired by our prophetic tradition, to speak truth to power. We don’t just shrug and say, life isn’t fair, that’s a given. We say: life is not fair, but what can we do to make it more fair?

And how do we respond when we feel life is not fair within our personal lives? This aspect of fairness I think Judaism would respond to as it would the 5th given, which states that people are not loving and loyal all the time. Here is the gift, the salve, of Judaism: we bring our disappointments with life and our disillusionments with people, to God. We talk with God about the ache in our heart, our hurt, the situations that make us sad. And this is the gift of community: that we are here to surround you when life is not fair, when people disappoint you: we are here to be a praying community as you talk with God. Community’s gift is, by its mere presence, to sustain you from falling into woe over the unfairness of life, and to keep you from the propensity to feel all alone while trying to shoulder that disappointment. Life is not fair; people do not always live up to who we want them to be. Community offers support and friendship, and those to pray with, when we are in that place of disappointment.

There’s a Hasidic story that Eli Wiesel recounts about a young student who brings his desperation with what he sees in the world to his rebbe. The rebbe responds: “I know there are questions that remain open; I know there is suffering so scandalous that it cannot even have a name; I know that one can find injustice in God’s creation—I know all that as well as you do. Yes, there are reasons enough for a person to explode with rage. And what do I say to you? Fine. Let us be angry together.” What happens along life’s path may be exalting, or humbling. We make sense of it when we reach out to others. And while many of us may lean on or turn to good friends in times of joy or times of trial, there is a profoundly different depth and sacredness about doing this as a congregational community. Why? Because in community we touch different lives and are touched by people we wouldn’t otherwise be attached to. Being in community offers the framework through which we give to each other. And this too is Judaism’s answer to the final given: that pain is a part of life. Pain is not punishment, it is simply a given in life. There is physical pain because our bodies are human. There is emotional pain because our souls are human. But Judaism teaches the remedy to the pain in life is to embrace the fact that life is filled with pleasure, too. Pleasure is the salve that restores the emotional balance to our life. How many weddings have you and I been to, where an aging or infirm grandparent rises to dance at their grandchild’s wedding, to be part of the simcha! We cannot take away the pain that we will encounter in our lives; but we can counter pain by being mindful of every opportunity to celebrate, to savor the good in the world. And this is the gift of community: we are commanded, as a community, to create pleasurable moments, over and over again. We create special meals on Shabbat and holidays, so that we can enjoy the simply pleasure of food. We consecrate wine for this very purpose, it brings joy to the heart As community we come together to create pleasure in ways we can’t as individuals, we celebrate Simchat Torah with our dancing and music, and Purim with our costumes, and Shabbat with our singing. We acknowledge the simple pleasures of sunset and sunrise, in our prayers. We find the pleasure in serving others through our volunteerism in the community. We celebrate all of life’s sacred moments, because creating and finding pleasure is the antidote to pain. Within community are the possibilities of ongoing celebration. It is the wisdom of Ecclesiastes who tells us, in his senior years, not to overindulge in pleasure, for that becomes a running away from life, when we try to eradicate pain with false remedy, but we can balance the pain with mindful pleasure, as with wisdom we seek to balance our lives.

Let me leave you with this thought. It is true that there are sobering truths to living life. Yet not one of us would give up living because of the fact that life changes, and that people die, and disappoint us, and that sometimes life is filled with pain or unfairness. These may even be the deepest moments from which we grow. But they are not the definition of life. They are not endpoints, but can be entry points for Jewish wisdom and the gift of Jewish community. Life is worth living because we open ourselves up to people and opportunities. Community, the community we celebrate tonight, our temple community, is what sustains us and enriches us, as we face life’s givens. Chazak chazak v’nitchazak, may we be strong, may we find strength, and may we strengthen each other in our wonderful gift of community. Amen.

A Place for Pluralism in Israel - Rosh Hashanah Morning, Sept. 19, 2009

There is a war that is raging inside Israel, but it is not an Arab Israeli war. It is a Jewish-Jewish war. The prominent Israeli writer Amos Oz, puts it this way: “Israel’s prime struggle is not between rich or poor, Sephardim and Ashkenazim, but between diversity and pluralism on one side and fanaticism and hatred on the other. This is the greatest social issue in Israel right now."

Israel is embroiled in a cultural war about what it means to be a democratic state that advocates pluralism, equality and religious freedom, and what it means to be a Jewish state. It is a war between orthodoxy and ultra-orthodoxy, between secular and religious. It is a culture war whose battlefields are the Israeli Supreme Court, the Knesset, the newspapers, even the bus routes in secular and religious neighborhoods. It is about the stranglehold of the ultra orthodox on laws that effect every Israeli, like who they marry, and where they can be buried, and if they are in fact a Jew. But it is also about Israelis finding their way to a Judaism they never knew before: a liberal, egalitarian Judaism that is about celebration and spirituality and not conformity and halacha. Israeli society is in significant transformation.

You may ask, why are we talking about social and religious disharmony in Israeli society, when Iran is threatening nuclear weapons and the Palestinians are talking one-state solution — a solution that doesn’t include Israel’s existence? The answer is that it doesn’t make sense to care about Israel’s physical survival if we don’t care about Israel’s spiritual survival. Why care that a Jewish state exists if Jews are denied Jewish identity and Jewish expression within that state? Why brag of there being one democratic country in the Middle East if we don’t care whether that democracy insures that Reform and Conservative Jews have freedom of religion, its orthodox women have equality with its men, its’ Russian-born citizens aren’t discriminated against by the religious authorities when they go to marry?

You might be surprised to learn where some of the battlefields are in the culture war. Imagine you have picked up the Jerusalem Post on any given day. You may be reading the headline article about Egged, the national bus company, creating special lines that cater to, but are not exclusively for, the haredim, the ultra-Orthodox. On these bus routes, men enter the front of the bus and sit in the front; women enter from the back and sit in the back of the bus. On public transportation, women are denied their civil rights! Amongst the many cases reported is a 76 year old woman, her leg in a cast, yelled at and forced from a seat behind the bus driver to the back of the bus. Just two weeks ago, a mixed group of 40 men and women boarded the buses and insisted on sitting up front; participant Anat Hoffman said their being there gave orthodox women on those buses the courage to move forward, and she received thank yous from Orthodox women who didn’t have the courage to speak up for themselves in their community. Or you may read of Yossi Fackenheim, the son of famed theologian and Holocaust survivor Emil Fackenheim, who last year was told by a Jerusalem Rabbinic Court that he was not a Jew. This, despite having had an ultra-Orthodox conversion at age two, being accepted as a Jew by Israel’s orthodox chief rabbinate both upon his immigration to Israel 23 years ago and upon his marriage in 2001. An ultra-ultra-Orthodox rabbi who heads the court has revoked the chief rabbinate’s acceptance of his Judaism because Fackenheim is not Orthodox in his practice. This type of scenario - where one orthodox state institution does not recognize the authority of another orthodox state institution - is being played out daily in Israel, in reversals of conversions and denial of marriages. Fighting in the culture war is Gabrielle Pollack, a Conservative Israeli Jew who is serving in the IDF, who had to fight to say kaddish for her grandmother, because according to the Orthodox rabbinate which oversees the army, they do not recognize Gabrielle’s right as a woman to be counted in a minyan. The army rabbinate denied her the use of the sanctuary to hold a separate, non-Orthodox service because this would legitimate Conservative Judaism. Pollack was told she could hold a gathering of men and women to read psalms and say kaddish in a classroom, but that she could not hold an actual prayer service even in the classroom. Gabrielle, it seems, has the right to serve in Israel’s army, but not the right to pray in Israel’s shuls as a non-Orthodox religious woman. Or perhaps on this day, you are reading the newspaper article about liberal rabbis being locked out of the public ritual baths, the publicly-funded mikveh, because the orthodox rabbi, a paid city official, doesn’t approve of non-Orthodox Judaism and won’t let public facilities be used by the public unless its his public.

Now some of you may be saying, these legal discriminations are not new to Israel, liberal Jews have been fighting for years to gain recognition and status, and you would be right. But what is different right now, isn’t the legal issues, but the spirit of pluralism that has grown in Israel. You might remember the old adage, of Israelis, “the shul I don’t go to is Orthodox.” In other words, for Israelis, there were two ends of a spectrum, to be secular, which the vast majority were, but the Judaism that they didn’t practice was an orthodox Judaism. That paradigm has changed. Some say that it happened in the aftermath of the blackest moment in recent Israeli history: the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin. On that November 4, Saturday night in 1995, as thousands gathered in Tel Aviv for a pro-peace rally, a young, ultra-religious fanatic named Yigal Amir fired into the Prime Minister’s chest. What died with the Prime Minister was a hope that secular and religious Israelis could find common ground in the pursuit of peace with the Palestinians. What died that night was the hope in a comprehensive Israeli-Arab peace settlement. For weeks, young Israelis haunted the site of Rabin’s murder, lighting yahrzeit candles and crying, comforting each other. But there are those who say that something else was born from that black moment. Orly Kenneth describes it this way: “That night, I realized that we had better attend to our future, to the deep gaps between religious and secular, which were threatening to tear us apart. And…I realized that I needed something beyond the intellectual, I needed to touch my spiritual and emotional self, too.” What we have seen in the 14 years since Rabin’s death, has been a steady turn toward spirituality and Judaism in Israel that has not been about embracing a Judaism based in obedience to halacha/Jewish law, or turning over one’s autonomy to a certain rebbe, but about creating liberal communities where learning, and celebration and Shabbat and Jewish holidays are joyfully embraced without abdication of one’s own individualism. And poised to welcome these Israelis who are hungry for the spirituality and ritual of Judaism has been Reform Judaism and Conservative Judaism, which have been working diligently for 40 years to establish a place for liberal Judaism in Israel. All across Israel, Reform and Conservative congregations are growing and taking root. They are not apologetic for not being Orthodox, they are not there to fill a need for American Jews who have made aliyah. They are growing because there is a generation of Israelis who are discovering that there is more to being Jewish than just being an Israeli. These are Israelis who are finally able to look at Judaism and understand that it is more than their ethnic heritage, that, unshackled from orthodoxy, it has so much to offer their lives.

And leading the way in this spiritual transformation are amazing, committed Reform rabbis. From a Reform movement that began in Israel with two kibbutzim, a few flagship congregations, in Haifa and in Jerusalem, the Leo Baeck School in Haifa, and a rabbinic seminary, the progressive movement, as it is known, has slowly, slowly put one step in front of the other, encouraging Israelis to become progressive rabbis, encouraging the legal fight for religious pluralism in Israel with the creation of the Israel Religious Action Center. The fight for footing has been ardous, piting Reform rabbis against city councils who did not want to extend them legal rights. They refused to give permits, refused to let buildings be built, refused to acknowledge progressive rabbis as rabbis, male or female. It took decades for Rabbis like Levi Kalman, Maya Leibovich, Mickey Boyden and Moti Rotem to convince city governments that they were not going away. These are the stories of the 1970s, 80s, the 1990s that many of us know so well, the synagogues defaced, the political pressure not to support the Reformim. It has taken the change of a generation, but there is a sea change. In the year 2000, I stood in the town of Modi’in with Rabbi Kineret Shiryon as she stuck a shovel into the earth. The town of Modi’in, a growing city between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, had given a piece of property to the progressive community called YOZMA; it could be theirs if they raised the 2.5 million to build on it. A delegation of 30 American Reform rabbis had visited the mayor’s office that day to lend support to this project. YOZMA was a community that met in portable trailers, not unlike what we have here at the back of TBT. But the challenge to the Progressive movement to be a real presence in Modi’in was a moment not to be missed. A few years later, the mayor came back to Rabbi Shiryon and asked, if the city were to build a childcare across from YOZMA, would the YOZMA community staff it? Today, the community is so vital that YOZMA has two rabbis. When I talked to Rabbi Nir Barkin, he tells me: “There are 6 million Jews in Israel. Two million are Orthodox, two million will always be secular. That means there are 2 million Jews for progressive Judaism to reach out to.” YOZMA’s growth testifies that Barkin is working hard: they have had 50 new families join every year for the last three years, and are now a congregation of 500 families - larger than TBT! YOZMA has more than 50 B’nei/B’not Mitzvah a year, dozens of weddings, and involvement in over twenty social action projects a year. There is a growing presence of native-Israeli born families in the ritual life of YOZMA and its study opportunities. And YOZMA is one of 25 Reform congregations in Israel. Not all have buildings, but all are bringing new people in the door to experience what you and I take for granted: children and mothers and fathers sitting together on Shabbat, singing together, guitar and musical instruments filling our sanctuaries. Men and women studying together in Bet Midrash study sessions, daughters preparing for Bat Mitzvah, Jews improving their communities through social justice programs. I think of the words of Maya Leibovich, the courageous rabbi of Mevasseret Zion, a suburb of Jerusalem. “In my first year, David Sharvit, the local council secretary, told me at our first meeting, that he will see to it that I will be ousted from town as there is no place for Reform Judaism in Mevasseret. At the time I was a newly-ordained Rabbi and our offices were my shoulder bag and the congregation numbered 27 families. Today we have a lovely building of our own, 200 families paying membership dues, I have an office and we brought to Mevasseret the most meaningful social action project. A couple of months ago when I met with David, he had only praise for the work we do in the community and feels sure he does not remember our first conversation. We’ve created a presence here and it is thanks to the wonderful work of our many volunteers, wonderful staff and a fabulous Board.” These are the victories of the culture wars, of not only an acceptance of pluralism and diversity in Israeli society, but a need for liberal Jewish practice in the lives of Israelis. This year, four Reform congregations were granted buildings by city councils; one was dedicated just days ago, a second in coming weeks.

At the forefront of this cultural transformation is the Reform rabbinic seminary in Jerusalem, which we support with TBT’s dues to the Union for Reform Judaism. In the last ten years the number of Israelis ordained as Reform rabbis has more than doubled. This fall, there will be 23 Israelis in the rabbinic program, 6 more will be ordained this November. In the words of Rabbi Nir Barkin, “the highly respected old guard is now blended with fresh-young and native Hebrew speaking rabbis. This phenomenon creates a change on the ground. It is no longer, in my opinion, the old paradigm of liberal Judaism versus the State authorities or the Orthodox monopoly. It is now a group of well educated spiritual visionaries and young-lay-leadership that set goals and reach to achieve them. YOZMA's Jewish Day School, as well as Leo Baeck's elementary school, Tali Jerusalem and Ossishken day school in Tel Aviv are just a few of the examples of the Israeli Movement’s new direction into… the secular… Israeli society.”

“While we still face political and administrative challenges in the government level and we have legal battles we still confront, I feel that the Reform revolution of Israel has reached a point of no-return. It is a grass roots change led by a vision and people to lead towards achieving it. The ship has left the port and the siege feeling is no longer dominant. As a matter of fact, it does not exist at all.”

While I share with you these victories, the rooting and flowering of the progressive movement in more substantial ways than ever, don’t think that our work is done or that all is easy or taken for granted in Israel; that pluralism doesn’t still need our help. It is a struggle for progressive Judaism to gain legitimacy in Israel, when the hundreds of weddings conducted by its rabbis every year are not recognized by the state, when its rabbis can’t be chaplains in the army, or have the legal authority to bury their own congregants. Taxes underwrite the cost of every orthodox synagogue building in Israel, yet progressive communities get very little state money. This means that members of progressive synagogues are in essence taxed twice; once through their tax dollars that go to support the orthodox, and then the money they put forward to buy their own land, build their own buildings, hire their own rabbis, run their own programs. Sadly, the greatest challenges in promoting/ advocating liberal Judaism, says Rabbi Mickey Bodyden of Kehilat-Yonaton in Hod Hasharon, is “finding the material and human resources to build a thriving movement in a country in which orthodoxy is state-funded and enjoys recognition. Ours is frequently a struggle against the authorities to gain the rights to which we are entitled.” And Rabbi Maya Leibovich says one of the greatest challenges is “to overcome the ignorance and prejudice to Reform Judaism by those who have never prayed in a Reform synagogue but have been incited against the movement. Here there is a beginning of a meaningful change in Israeli society to accepting Liberal Judaism,” she says.

A key player in this cultural war has been the Supreme Court of Israel. In recent years the court has been courageous in helping Israel remain true to its democratic ideals of equality and religious freedom. Four years ago it heard the case of Rabbi Miri Gold, the Reform rabbi of congregation Birkat Shalom on Kibbutz Gezer who petitioned the state to pay her salary as it did for the other rabbis on the Gezer regional council. Two years ago the Court admitted it was discriminatory to pay state salaries to orthodox rabbis but not to Reform Rabbis, directing the state to offer a solution. After long extension periods, the court has chastised the state for its inaction. Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch ruled “the duty of the State to pluralism is not only a passive duty but an active one as well.” The outcome of Rabbi Gold’s case is still pending. In a similar victory, the Court ruled this summer that the State must fund conversion programs implemented by the Reform and conservative movements since it underwrites orthodox ones. These legal advancements do not mean the religious authorities are close to accepting progressive Judaism, but surely the legal victories of the progressive movement’s Israel Religious Action Center are helping to push the cultural wars in a way that embraces pluralism. There is much to be done, and that is where you and I come in. We have a role in insisting that Israel live up to its democratic ideals of freedom of religion, and we have a role in supporting the Reform Movement in offering pluralistic Judaism to the 71% of Israelis who say they are not orthodox and not traditional.

So I invite you this year in joining me in making this a year where we reach out to our sister congregations and the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism. Our Reform Movement in Israel is at a crossroad - the hard-fought achievements of our brothers and sisters will either make the break-throughs for which they have labored, or we will lose the momentum that brought us to this point. So we will help them keep their momentum but in a way that brings the spirit of our TBT community to them. This March 14-18, a 5-day bike ride will take place across the north of Israel, called the Ride4Reform. I am inviting every one of you to be part of the Ride4Reform. Now I wish I could tell you I had plane tickets to Israel for each one of us, and a bike to ride as well, but I think I have the second best thing. We have a congregation filled with cycling enthusiasts, from our pre-schoolers who go zipping around the Torah School quad on their tri-cycles, to our weekend cyclists who cover plenty of road on Sunday mornings. We even have one congregant who often shows up to Shabbat morning services in his bike gear, and just stashes his bike in the atrium! So friends, if we cannot all Ride4Reform in Israel, then we can all Ride4Reform here in Ventura this winter. What better way to celebrate the fun and spirit of our community than by coming together, to ride and to raise tzedekah so that Jews like us in Israel can create what we have created here; a liberal Jewish community where men and women, families together, can respond to the call of Jewish life, each in their own way? Now, do not think that I am trivializing the challenge to the Reform movement in Israel by saying the equivalent of “let’s have a bake sale.” I am truly saying, let’s have a Bike-A-Thon. Our Social Action committee is on board, our ARZA reps Bill Sherman and Marianne Flam are on board, our Torah School will be a part of this project. Our goal is to raise thousands of dollars this winter and send them to Israel, but in the form of our sponsoring one particular rider in Israel’s Ride4Reform. You see, we have already sent Israel our Temple’s secret weapon, Jonathan Rothstein Fisch, a first year rabbinic student studying in Jerusalem. Many of you know Jon, who was raised here at TBT, became a Bar Mitzvah and a confirmand here. Most of our older teens know him for his youth work with the regional URJ office, perhaps some know him from his many years attending and working at Camp Newman. Or perhaps you have known Jon through his parents Bryan and Carrie, or his love of cycling around town, or his unforgettable, gregarious personality. We are proud that he represents TBT as he studies to be a rabbi, and we are doubly proud that Jon is spearheading TeamHUC, the team of riders from the Hebrew Union College rabbinic seminary - both students and faculty - that are in training already for the ride. You can see them on the computer screen that is in our lobby through the Holy Days. How better to support Jon and Israel’s Movement for Progressive Judaism than to be a part of TEAM TBT, as we ride, and raise tzedakah for religious equality in Israel? Now let me not preclude any of our local cyclists who might want to go to Israel and be part of the ride there — I have talked to and encouraged many of our TBT cyclists to embrace this unique way to visit Israel; if any one wants to talk about riding in Israel, I pledge our temple’s sponsorship for you to enter. We must help create the dynamic, vibrant and progressive Jewish community for which Israelis are yearning.

In the weeks and months ahead, you will hear about our Ride4Reform, and when you are here at temple, you can read more about the ride and the progressive congregations in Israel on the bulletin board in our hallway. If you would like to be part of planning our ride, let me know. Whether you are a rider, a supporter, or both, welcome to Team TBT, where we can take the momentum of our vital community and export it home.

Just this summer the first of its kind large-scale public opinion poll was conducted in Israel to ask Israelis about issues of religion and state. The findings were an overwhelming mandate to limit the power and privileges given to orthodoxy and a mandate to forward pluralism. How did the topics I raise today fair? 83% of Israeli citizens want to ensure freedom of religion in Israel. 63% support equal funding for all Jewish denominations. 92% of secular Jews support abolishing the Orthodox monopoly on marriage. 80% want to cancel or limit the gender segregated buslines. While this poll results are overwhelming in favor of pluralism, don’t think for a moment that it will be easy for Israeli society to re-define the place and role and power of the many orthodox establishments in its midst. Our voice and our support is vital, and it is vital right now. We are not telling Israelis what to do with their country; we are here to give them the support to build what they dream of for themselves. Ken Yehi Ratzon.

Judaism Minus God - Erev Yom Kippur, Sept. 27, 2009

It is reported that there is a rise in the number of people who call themselves secular, and I have to admit, as a rabbi, it makes sense. It seems many of the secular are younger people, the Gen X and Gen Y generations, those who have said we don’t trust any of society’s traditional institutions. We don’t trust marriage - 50% of our parents have divorced. We don’t trust government - our contemporaries are fighting a war over weapons of mass destruction that the government lied about. We don’t trust religion - priests sexually abuse children and get away with it. In all candor, the younger generation may be right. Let us contemplate the religious world as our Jewish young people have seen it: the Jews they hear of are the religious Jews on the West Bank who vilify all Palestinians, the Christians they experience are their fundamentalists friends who try to convert them in high school, the Muslims they see are the jihadists who marred their young adulthoods with a vision of the Twin Towers collapsing. In the wake of the fundamentalism they have seen, secularism seems like a good choice; for religion has often been synonymous with intolerance, self- righteousness and violence.

And the truth is, it is not just the youth who feel this way, but many of us, too. Secularism is growing across the globe, not just in the United States. Western Europe, once deeply Christian, has become much more secular. In Israel, the majority of Jews claim to be secular, which we spoke of on Rosh Hashanah morning. Secularism has grown to a point that atheists, who often felt they had to hide in the closet as Free Thinkers, have written and published some best-selling books in the last decade. The success of authors like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens must prove that they are on to something. We are entering a more secular time, where it seems people are more ready to embrace the universal principles of goodness and human betterment that Jacob Holyoake had in mind in the 19^th century when he coined the word secularism. And really, is that such a bad thing, aren’t goodness and human betterment the universal values that our religious beliefs are supposed to lead us to, anyway?

Secularism is a rejection of the religious. But because Judaism is more than a religion, it is possible to be Jewish and secular. And secularism exists in Judaism. Jewish secularism is an ideology--secularists today see themselves as firm lovers of the cultural tradition of Judaism, and see that they have a commitment to the future of Judaism by celebrating their Jewish identity and passing it on to the next generation. Jewish secularists embrace the peoplehood quality of Judaism while rejecting its’ religious life.

Jewish secularism raises important questions. But to me the greatest question that secularism poses, is a question about God: if Jews are seeking a Judaism disconnected from God, what failed? Is it God who got the people-thing wrong, or is it people who got the God-thing wrong? Or is it possible that it is not God that needs to be rejected but the unsatisfactory ideas about God that we have perpetuated? When our young people see the ravages of fundamentalism, is it fair that they should throw God and religion out, simply because humankind has mismanaged religion and misbehaved in the name of God? Is that God’s fault, or really, our own?

Let’s be honest, for all the volumes and volumes written about religion, we still woefully misunderstand God. Religious scholar Karen Armstrong says “we use an inadequate image of God to prop up our own beliefs.” I have this incredible little book on my shelf given to me by the former Missionary Church pastor up here on Foothill; it’s his religious autobiography. Sometimes, I will read a particular chapter to my confirmands, about how, when he moved to town, he wanted to buy a particular house. He knew it was the perfect house for him and his wife. They couldn’t afford it, but they prayed and prayed on it. They waited, they prayed and prayed. Other people wanted the house. Finally, miraculously, the sellers lowered the asking price and took their offer. He was sure that this was God’s work. My confirmands laugh at this notion of an intervening God who works in real estate. Most of us, as non-fundamentalists, shake our heads and scoff at this absurd belief in God, as if this is what the Divine spends his days doing, and how sad that there are people that believe this is God’s work in the world, making us happy with the material possessions we want. But let me ask you: when people we love get ill and die, when tragedy and disability and mental illness befall those in our lives, don’t we hold God to the same standard; God the fixer: fix the problem. God the rewarder: reward me for being good. Use your power for me, God. Prove to me you are all powerful. And if not… I won’t believe in you. I have no use for you.

The human heart can fall into this kind of thinking about God, can’t it? Karen Armstrong calls this “unskillful use of religion.” How can we think about God in a way that can stand the test of time; that can reflect what God is and not what we want God to be? I would start with the Book of Job because it speaks straight to the human heart at the moment we might need God the most - when we are suffering. Imagine, a book of the Bible that raises the quasi-heretical and cynical question of whether we human beings only believe in God when we are getting what we want out of life. It is easy to believe in God, praise God, when our lives are good, when we are walking on the sunny side of life. But the challenge to human kind is if we still have faith in God when we are suffering, when we are in pain, and not able to live the life we want. Job is you and me, he is the everyman. Job is made to suffer, and here is his test: will he, at the moments of life’s greatest challenge, be like those we know who turn to God and find strength, or will Job be like so many we know, who say, God, I don’t believe in you and walk away?

Job asks God “why me?” But God does not answer that question. As Rabbi Harold Schulweis teaches, “Why me?” is not a question - nobody wants the real answer to why they are ill, or suffering. We do not ask “Why does this happen?” in general- because we understand the inevitability of illness and tragedy in the world. “Why did this happen to me?” is a cry of pain. God cannot answer Job’s question because the answer is one of science and what Job’s question demands is an answer of compassion. So God answers Job’s cry of pain in another way. God visits Job in Job’s pain: God is present. Job never stops talking to, yelling at, or questioning God and God is always present. Job passes the test: He concludes: I will not abandon my relationship with God when I can’t see blessings in my life. If I turn away from God I will die a spiritual death, and my spiritual side is the only thing that is keeping me going right now. Here then, is what we can know about God: God will be present. God is present during the times that life challenges us. It is the message we heard in the Torah reading on Rosh Hashanah morning. There too, Abraham is put to a test by God with a command to sacrifice his son Isaac. The whole event is like a foreshadowing by God - this is the test to be fully human, and to be in covenant with God - to live means you will be asked to make sacrifices, you will face tragedies and the incomprehensible, you will have no choice – that is what life is. There will be death, illness, hostility, violence…will your faith be deep enough to know that I am with you through it all, as you walk life’s path? Here is what we know about God: God is present.

In the Book of Job, and in the Akedah, God is responsible for the hardships; they are sent by God as a plot device. But the discerning mind must know that the challenges in our own lives are not sent by God; they are part of life. Yet, there is a human instinct to want to blame God for the hardships we face. How many times have I written eulogies, that many of you have heard, where following a tragic death of one too young, I feel my eulogy must begin by clearing God’s name, as if God is on trial for the crime of making the wrong judgment about a person’s life, and I am God’s defense attorney?

Our challenge is in making the leap—not a leap of faith, to simply believe, but a leap of intellect to a view of God that holds God accountable for what God is responsible for, but does not hold God accountable for the events and actions that are in the human realm. Too often, in our pain, we blame God for the shortcomings of humankind. When people die in war, are crippled in accidents, when relationships fall apart, how quick we are to trade away human kind’s free will, when we are hurt by the freely willed behavior of another. In those instances, it is not God from whom we should be walking away; it should be God we are walking toward for strength. Or we hold God responsible for the illnesses and calamities that occur in the natural world, reasoning, isn’t God the creator of the universe? We are awed by the intricacies and abilities of the world yet hold God accountable when their natural limits bring suffering to us. Reluctantly, very reluctantly, we all come to understand that life is not fair. We don’t want to hear that message. We would rather believe that somebody—God--is driving the bus. We have a hard time admitting that some things happen in the world at random. Or we would rather blame God. Are we turning to God for a mis-placed accountability when we should be turning to God for strength?

I recall Rabbi Harold Kushner writing about his crisis of faith when his 3-year old son was diagnosed with a rare and fatal disease. It was the moment that he discovered that not everything that happened in the world was God’s will. “Why did it ever occur to us that God wanted children to be born deformed? Why did it ever occur to us that God wanted the young mother to be stricken with m.s.? That God wanted the young husband and father to fall dead of a heart attack? Where did we ever get the notion that we add to God’s glory by holding God responsible for every earthquake and tsunami, every hurricane and forest fire. Every landslide, every automobile accident, every terrible disaster, including the holocaust? In that moment I understood that God was not doing this to my child. God was on my side, not on the side of illness. God was on the side of good people, not on the side of the people who victimize them.”

Protestant theologian David Ray Griffin teaches “although God is all-powerful, God’s power is not the power to control, it’s the power to enable.” God is not in control of the world; we are. But God is the power that enables us to control the world according to the noblest desires of the human heart. Consider the prayer that we chant over and over through the Holy Days, the Avinu Malkenu. We stand before the open ark and sing of our deepest collective desires for the year ahead-a year where there is not war, oppression, famine, sickness, a year where our hands are overflowing with blessing, with life for ourselves and our children. But even as we say, God make this happen, we know: God may be all-powerful, but it is not God who causes oppression, and war and famine. It is not God who is accountable for the condition of our world; we are. God cannot possibly make the next year better, but we can. God is not in control of us, for we have free will. But God does have the power to enable us, so that once we decide we don’t want to live in a world crippled by famine, war and oppression, we can make the next year the year we pray for in the Avinu Malkenu.

Rabbi David Hartman echoes this theology of God being present in our lives, and that we need to understand that we are accountable for what happens in the world. God is not a function; God doesn’t DO, God IS. God doesn’t solve our problems. What God does is empower human beings, so that we don’t abandon our responsibility in the world. What we should seek from God is that God will be with us, both in when we face our most private challenges, and when we live up to our social and moral responsibilities. Rabbi Hartman uses the analogy of the relationship he had with his father. He writes, “When my father died, I missed him terribly. I missed the warmth of the Shabbos table, and his song, and I often wished he could be with me again, not because I wanted him to solve my problems, but because I wanted him to be present to me. I wanted to feel the joy and comfort of being in the presence of my father. The deepest dimensions of love are not necessarily functional, utilitarian relationships. The deepest dimension of love is to say, I seek Your presence.” So it is with God: we seek God not because of a function, but because our life feels more fulfilling to us because God is present in it.

Why is it difficult for many of us to come to this acceptance of God, a God who is all-powerful, yet not intervening in the worst moments of human experience and human history? A God that is unrelenting about asking us to live up to our human potential and responsibility and not bail us out of our human turmoil? A God who, by being present in our souls, empowers and inspires us? In our hearts we would rather be children, hoping God the parent will protect us from the pains of the world. It is a more realistic theology to stand as adults in partnership with God, accepting our responsibility in the covenant and acknowledging God’s role in the covenant. Yet each of us, as parents, know what it is that parenthood asks of us—it is to love our children enough to raise them to be independent, resilient adults who we can stand face to face with us as competent adults. We would not consider ourselves successful if we raised children who as adults still turned to us to mediate the world for them, who remained infantile in their expectations of what we should be doing for them. When we hold onto views of God that inappropriately expect God to reward us for behaving morally, that expect God’s favoritism of us over others, or God’s supernatural intervening in the world to avoid pain in our lives, then we are creating unrealistic expectations that only set God up for inevitably disappointing us. That is not the God Judaism wants us to envision.

In all fairness, what does not help us reach this vision of God is the language of prayer. It is not that our prayers are wrong; it is that there is a disconnect that many of us have not learned to bridge. We who live in an age of reason and science, keep trying to read literally the prayers, and the bible for that matter, that were written in symbolic, and metaphoric language in order to capture the mystery and power of God. We often fail to understand that we cannot be wed to the written word, and that while prayers express our intellectual thoughts about God, they express our relationship with God and the deepest desires of the human heart, not factual recitations. We often confuse worship - what we do as a community together, expressing the collective longings of a people - with prayer, the intimate conversation of the human heart, expressing itself and reaching out for a God that is..simply, Present. We need communal worship and personal prayer as spiritual disciplines to keep us experiencing God’s presence.

Rabbi Michael Oblath writes, “There is nothing wrong with reconstructing our God concept every so often...we've done it for centuries, so why stop now when history and life continue to demand it from us?” I hope that these words give those of you with a secular leaning, a reason to re-examine God. A popular Jewish reading begins with these words, penned by Edmund Fleg: “I am a Jew because Judaism demands of me no abdication of the mind.” It is incumbent on us to wrestle with our understanding of God, over and over, and have the courage to reject the aspects that we find through life experience cannot reflect God. Rabbi Ed Feinstein reminds us, the question we should be asking isn’t “does God exist:” that is a question for theologians. The question is “what difference does it make to me?” Religion and God are the vehicles for plumbing the depths of our souls, which wizen through life experience. Will that be the same for each of us? No-we are taught that those who stood at Mt. Sinai each heard God in their own way—symbolized by there being not one uniform set of trope marks above the ten commandments but two sets--an insight that teaches us that there is no one right way to understand God. But on this yuntif, as we each seek God in our own way, let us know this for sure: God is Present.

A Jewish Vision for a Healthy Society - Yom Kippur Morning, Sept. 28, 2009

Mr. Stein was brought to the hospital and taken quickly in for coronary surgery. The operation went well, and as the groggy man regained consciousness, he was reassured by Dr. Rosen, who was waiting by his bed.
“You’re going to be just fine, Mr. Stein,” said Dr. Rosen.
The doctor was joined by a medical assistant, who said, “We do need to know, however, how you intend to pay for your stay here. Are you covered by insurance?”
Mr. Stein responded, “No, I’m not.”
“Then, can you pay in cash?” the assistant persisted.
“I’m afraid I can’t.”
“Well, do you have any close relatives?” she questioned sternly.
“Just my sister in New York,” he said, “But she converted to…she’s a nun….in fact, a real spinster.”
“Oh, I must correct you, Mr. Stein. Nuns are not spinsters; they are married to God.”
“Wonderful, wonderful,” Mr. Stein said. “In that case, please send my bill to my brother-in-law.”

You may laugh, but God knows how we are going to care for the Mr. Steins who need surgery but can’t afford rising insurance premiums, and how we are going to pay an appropriate salary to the Dr. Rosens who struggle to prioritize patient care, and how we will even afford the wages of our well-intentioned nurses, when the only blood pressure they have time to take is that of their medical assistants as they are mired in the red tape of keeping a business office afloat. As Jews, we have much to offer the current conversation about health care in our country. The state of health care in our country is a Jewish issue for three reasons: The first, is that we are disproportionately involved in the health care industry. Raise your hand for me please, if you are professionally involved in some aspect of health care; our nurses, pharmacists, doctors, dentists, hygienists, technologists, optometrists, home health aides, mental health professionals: in our congregation, some 80 of you labor in the field of bringing healing and health to others-that is a lot of you who are involved in health care. And this is a Jewish issue for a second reason: we are disproportionately users of the health system: visit any Jewish camp when it is pill call time and you will see a testimonial to our embrace of the healing arts! Raise your hand for me please, if you have been to a doctor in the last year. As Jews we are an aging ethnicity, with a disproportionate number of middle aged adults and seniors, who statistically are the ones who utilize health care services. We are involved in greater numbers in specialized areas such as mental health and fertility services. I would argue that the third reason this is a Jewish issue is because Torah teaches that we have an obligation to care for the well-being of ourselves and others, and our texts go into great detail discussing who carries the burden, how much health care must be provided, and how we allocate scarce community resources. For more than 2,500 years Jews have actively sought to make explicit what our human and societal obligation is to respond to physical suffering and illness. As our country moves forward yet again to grapple with creating a compassionate and comprehensive, quality health care system accessible to all of its citizens, Jews have a vital perspective to bring to the discussion. Let me propose that the first way we lift up our voices, as people of faith, is not in support of this plan or that, but in support of certain fundamental beliefs which we believe need to be reflected in any health care system. These are the beliefs that speak of each person being singular and valuable, of health as a precious gift to be nurtured and protected, both by the individual and the community, of medicine as being inherently good and desirable, and our belief that our duty to care for others is one of the ways we emulate the ethical work of God, who we call Rofeh HaHolim, the one who heals the sick. From those basic beliefs we derive these Jewish mitzvot: That saving a life is the greatest mitzvah of all, that we must care for the widow and orphan, i.e., the poorest and most disadvantaged in society, that healing must be offered to anyone in need. We also bring to the table the imperative to create a society that is just and compassionate. These beliefs and mitzvot are cornerstone values that Jewish society is built upon, and they are what we as Jews bring to the national discussion.

So let us re-cast the conversation about health care to have the right conversations in the right order. The question we need to ask right now is not what is our national policy, but what are our national values? Let me propose two health care questions, which Judaism has long discussed, which might help us focus on what we want our health care system to say about our national
values and character: “What is our obligation as a society to each other? Who has the responsibility to provide health care? And a third question, that is not about health care, but a very personal question…why is this topic so difficult for us to talk constructively about in this country, why does it elicit so much emotion? Why are we so afraid of bringing change to a problematic system?

Judaism’s response to the question of what we owe each other is clear: We do have a societal responsibility for each other’s well-being. These are biblical mandates: If I hurt you, I must pay your medical costs, I must seek out care for you, I must cover your lost wages until you can work again. Doctors must engage in healing; to ignore the needy is to transgress the commandment not to stand idly by the blood of one’s neighbor. But greater than the individual and the physician, is the obligation we have to each other as a society. In Deut. 21 we read that if a slain person is found on the outskirts of the city, the guilt for his murder rests upon all of the citizens, because they have not been proactive enough to insure the well-being of everyone—even those they do not know—within their community. There may be laws in place designed to keep citizens safe and protected within normal circumstances, but here is the responsibility to anticipate the unimaginable, and know that our responsibility extends beyond just what we can see in front of us, but to those places and people who are not so visible in society. Deuteronomy teaches that not just the leaders, but the entire community bears responsibility, because we all are diminished when a death could have been prevented. And I would suggest, that this text places before the biblical community the unasked question: Did we not hear the cries for help from this imperiled man, coming from the outskirts of our community?

What does this say to us today? As we consider the state of health care in our country, the parts of our system that simply do not achieve what health care in the wealthiest country in the world should achieve, we are left with the question we cannot continue to ignore: On these High Holy Days, as we sound the shofar to call us from our sense of complacency, will we hear, truly hear, the call to create an equitable, quality system, or will we continue to ignore the cries that have come up from our friends, our neighbors, and those we do not know, who cry out for livable medical care? The responsibility is not simply on the leaders of society; our humanity is diminished, our national character is tarnished, each time a person is turned away from needed care, a policy cancelled because it is too expensive for a family to bear, a person rejected from coverage because of a pre-existing condition. I asked before, how many of you worked in health care, and how many of you had been to a doctor in the last year. Now I ask you: please, raise your hand: do you know anyone who does not have health insurance? Is there a member of your family who is not insured? Have you ever gone without prescription drugs because your health insurance has been insufficient? Have you or a family member ever been denied health insurance, for any reason? If we hear the call of the shofar together as a community, how can we not hear each other, calling out for a rational, equitable approach to the many inequities that are part of this crisis? On Yom Kippur, when we demand that God be filled both with din, justice, and with rachamim, compassion, can we be anything less than just and compassionate ourselves, to the hands
that are raised and the voices that call out, asking that they continue to be inscribed in the Book of Life, because they have access to the quality health care they need to live?

In a perfect world, most of us want for our neighbors what we want for ourselves. But Who has the responsibility to provide health care, when our needs are infinite, but our resources finite? Physicians are required to treat everyone, but our texts are clear that they are not to bear the financial burden of this alone. The mitzvah of saving a life is incumbent upon us all, the physician does not have a higher duty, but he does have a higher training to tend to the ill. And so the work they do is as an agent of the community. Almost all self-governing Jewish communities throughout history set up systems to ensure that their citizens had access to health care in this way: The individual was to pay their own coverage and support their family but doctors were required to reduce their rates for the poor, and to be supplemented by communal subsidies as needed, so that all could receive the care they required. From this we find a basic model of communal response: Physicians provide at the least a basic level of care to all. A family pays for their health care. Costs must not prohibit the poor from access, and if they do, it is the community’s obligation to supplement, so that the doctor is reimbursed and the patient treated. While the principles are simple, they belie the great complexity of both the situation and the solution.

But if we start with the belief that America should provide for the well-being of her people, that our social contract with our people includes providing the opportunity for shelter, food, clothing, basic health services and a high school education, then we can begin to evaluate what must be done to fulfill our promise as a great country. While many of us may feel that our personal health care coverage is fine, the fact that almost 47 million people are not insured-16% of our population-means our health care system is not fine. Of that 47 million, 3/4s are people who work--more than half of those 47 million are people who work full-time, who fall in the cracks between having employer-supported health care programs and government-supported Medicaid programs. It is estimated that another 6-7 million people are likely to lose their health coverage because of the recession. We see this economic instability reflected in the fact that at some point last year 90 million people were without insurance for all or a portion of the year. And let's be honest; minority communities lack insurance at a greater rate than the affluent and white community. How can that be just, when 33% of Latino Americans lack health insurance? 20% of African Americans? Last week the Ventura County Star reported 30% of the residents of Oxnard, our neighbors, have no health insurance! 11% of children still have no coverage, in spite of state and federal programs designed to specifically cover them. 23 million American families spend more than 10% of their annual income on health care, a percent which puts them at potential financial instability. In the last decade, the average cost of a family health care plan doubled from $6,000 to $11,000 annually. These numbers cry out to us not to be ignored; to recognize that every person without health care is a senior citizen who needs an MRI, or a child who needs pre-diabetes intervention, or an adult dealing with back pains that are becoming chronic and possibly disabling. How can we ignore people who are simply asking that we care about their quality of life as much as we care about our own?

And this brings us to our third question, one that is not about health care but is about the tenor of rhetoric in our country about this topic and about what is behind the conversation. … why is this topic so difficult for us to talk constructively about in this country, why does it elicit so much emotion? Why are we so afraid of bringing change to a problematic system?

I would say that many of us operate under a basic sense of satisfaction with our health care, that if we and our children get what we need when we get in to a doctor, then it is hard to believe something is broken that seems to be working for us. We can’t see what lies beneath the surface. If we can afford our medical insurance today, we can’t imagine that it will be hard to provide ourselves with the level of care we want in a decade, when the rates will have doubled yet again; and they will, because health care costs are growing at 3 times the rate of inflation. It is impossible to imagine that the $11,000 we pay each year now-that’s the average family policy-and which cost $6,000 back in 2000--will be $20,000 in ten years. If we are healthy now, it is hard to imagine that in a few years, the medicine that a doctor might put us on might lead to our being rejected for a different health care plan, because by virtue of our aging we have what insurance companies will list as a pre-existing condition. If our work is stable now, it is hard to imagine that in a few years, our professional life, our employment, might change, affecting our ability to pay our insurance premiums without our employer-based plan or at least our expected income. And if we are in our mid-50s, it is hard to imagine that Medicare, the government-subsidized health care that we have been paying into for decades of our work life, will be broke and thereby worthless to our retirement. While it is hard to imagine these scenarios, the truth is, while we can’t know about some variables such as our continuing health and employment, we can absolutely predict the doubling of health care insurance and the demise of Medicare. And we can predict that because our health care system is stretched, contorted and so problematic, that there are scenarios in the future from which none of us are immune. It is not just out of a place of goodness that we need to address health care issues for those who “have not” in this country; it is from a place of absolute self-interest. What we have, we want to find a way to keep. And this is the source of our fear. We are afraid to do anything to address health care will compromise what we already have and we do not want to help a bad situation if it means giving up our doctors, and insurance, and access to state-of-the-art equipment, because this is our life and our health we are talking about! But can we imagine a health care system that allows those of us who like our level of health care to keep it? Can we imagine a system that then allows others to afford their own health care? Can we imagine a system that has real competition, that brings down the price of insurance, that may cut the profits of insurance companies, but assures that people get the care they need and not lose out because of insurance loopholes that allow insurance giants to bail when you actually need the coverage? Can we imagine rectifying our current way of providing health care so that the uninsured do not rely on emergency rooms for basic treatment, which drives health care costs in the entire system up? Can we imagine a system where 1/3 of the costs are not considered waste? It is estimated that we spend $6,000 more per person in the U.S. on health care costs, and that the U.S. and South Africa are the only two fully-industrialized countries that do not ensure that all citizens have health insurance, either through national programs or employer-based programs. It is estimated that 1/3 of the cost of renewing our system will come from reallocating funds that are wasteful funds right now. Can we imagine not being fearful of government’s involvement in health care? Our government already provides health care services—to our veterans, through the V.A., and to our seniors through Medicare, and to many poor through Medicaid. The fact that these programs are burdened tells us, the health care system as a whole needs to be re-thought, re-imagined. If we can continue to use private health insurance and are not compelled to use a government option, why is there fear about our creating a public option for those who might chose that?

Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center spoke about the health care crisis in these terms: Like other religious groups we have seen directly the effects of the deterioration of America’s health care system: “growing concern by congregants over shrinking access to comprehensive coverage, fears that the medical consequences of a long-term illness will be compounded by the drain on life savings…in a recent survey of Reform Jews, more that a third have experienced a decrease in their health coverage in the past five years, and 68% have been faced with an increase in out of pocket expenses…over that same period. For Jews, the current health care crisis is not only a human tragedy, but an immense moral challenge.” Friends, I am quoting from a statement Rabbi Saperstein made in January of 1992, almost 18 years ago! We found the issue too enormous, too complex and too emotional to deal with as a country 18 years ago. It has only grown worse. We have the opportunity again but we must set aside our fear. We must set aside our fear that our personal health will be compromised if we demand accountability, resources and equity for others. We must set aside our fear of allowing the government to provide national choices for citizens, which is something every other industrialized country, including Israel does, without detriment, and which our country already does through Medicare and the V.A. We must set aside angry rhetoric and partisanship, because heart disease, cancer, illness affects every one of us, regardless of our political leaning. We face a crisis in health care quality, coverage, cost. We will not fix it in the next few months or years, for we need to re-evaluate health care in a profound way, and continue to demand the our elected officials strive for these three mandates: quality care, coverage for all, and affordability.

These are the days when we read “choose life that you and your children shall live”. We are reminded that there is a choice placed before us, between that which is good and that which is bad, between life and death. These are the days when we are shaken with the refrain of the Uneteneh tokef, of who shall live and who shall die, who shall see ripe old age and who shall not. These are the days when the shofar calls us, compelling us to hear what must be heard, not just with the human ear but with the human heart. In the most profound of ways, we have our lives and the lives and well-being of others in our hands. What will we choose to do?