To watch this sermon delivered live, click this link. The sermon begins around 1:24. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgboC5vAS4o
Taking Our Breath Back - Kol Nidre 2020
Rabbi Jill Perlman
Tonight, I want to talk about our breath. How it feels like we can’t quite catch our breath anymore… like the air is running out.
You and me - we’ve encountered this feeling before. As we were baking our bricks to serve that master, Pharaoh, Moses came to tell us that redemption was near. We would soon go free from Egypt. But the people – us – we couldn’t hear him. We couldn’t hear Moses because the text tells us and we feel it, that we were kotzer ruach, literally, we were short of breath.[1]
Were we kotzer ruach, short of breath from the work or could we not comprehend Moses’ revelation because in Hebrew, ruach means both breath and spirit and it was our spirits that were broken?
We can relate! Our spirits too are low, our breath is short. It’s hard to imagine the promise of better days ahead when our lungs are burning from the stress and the smoke and the very real effects of this virus.
However, for some, breath is no longer a given. That is the case for George Floyd whose very breath, whose very spirit was taken from him. For 8 minutes and 46 seconds, we as a society watched a man’s God-given breath being stolen from him as he called for his mother.
How can any of us claim any connection to morality when we disregard human life so blatantly? How can we watch life draining away, breath slipping away and not rise up? How is our own breath not cut short from the horror?
I believe with every fiber of my being that God breathed that breath into George Floyd. Just as God breathed ruach into Adam, the first human being, God breathed it into George. God had given and only God should take away. Not police officers with a knee to a man’s windpipe. That they acted as the ultimate judges and jury for George Floyd makes a mockery of our system of law. And a mockery of life itself.
George Floyd’s death, we know too well, is one in but a long series of deaths of black men and women still on-going today where guilt is presumed based on the color of their skin and the death penalty is the first resort. We are in a moral crisis and we have a moral mandate handed down by our sages and by our own flesh-and-blood beating hearts to act. Our lungs contract; this is the moment.
And our Board of Directors here at Temple Isaiah, joining with over 600 other Jewish organizations and synagogues representing over half the Jews in our country understood that when we affirmed in a recent statement that Unequivocally, black lives matter.[2]
Our Jewish values grounded and guided us in this decision. For it is in the Talmud that we learn: Whoever can protest to his household and does not, is accountable [for the sins] of his household; if she could protest to her town [and does not], she is accountable for the sins of her town; if he could protest to the whole world [and does not], he is accountable for the sins of the whole world."[3] From this, we learn: if we have the ability to raise our voice, it is our obligation to do so. So it is with every human, and so it is for us as a community. Since Temple Isaiah has the ability to raise its voice for justice, we did, and we will continue to do so.
There were questions raised in the process that I do want to address for the sake of clarity. Some of you have asked: But, rabbi… What about the organization known as the Movement for Black Lives that in its original platform in 2016 endorsed BDS, the boycott, divestment, and sanction movement against Israel, called Israel an apartheid state, and stated that the US is “complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people?”[4]
Let me say this: When we say Unequivocally, Black Lives Matter, we mean it. Black lives matter – period – without equivocation.
As for the organization, the Isaiah statement is not an affirmation of any organization. It is an acknowledgement that in our current day, black lives are valued differently in our society – and that needs to change. But if even if it were an affirmation of the organization, would that alter the very simple truth that our black brothers and sisters should not be dying at the hands of our police?
As for Israel and BDS, I join you in the discomfort that lies in the linking of oppressions, especially ones poorly understood from non-proximate places. However, I would rather be at the table any day than not. When Jews exempt themselves from these spaces, those spaces risk becoming even more anti-Zionist. Is it jarring and painful for us as Jews? Yes. Is it necessary? Absolutely. Think about it: are you going to let someone else’s anti-Israel agenda scare you off from standing up against racism? Are you going to let them determine where and when you get to lift up your voice for justice?
I am a proud Zionist who loves Israel and I believe that black and brown people should not be shot for being black and brown people. Period. If we begin to think of this as either/or, we have missed the point.
Another question I have been asked is: But rabbi… if we stand for Black Lives Matter, are we condoning violence? What about the looters?
No, I am not condoning violence, but let me add that when we become far more concerned with property over murder, we need to do the long, hard, sacred work of re-discovering that still small voice because somewhere along the way it has been silenced within us.
We all know that movements hold many voices, attitudes, and concerns. Don’t let those at the edges sway you from the moral truth that racism must be eradicated and that we all share the same breath, we all breathe the same air, we all are filled with the same ruach, the same spirit of the divine and no one has the right to take that away from any of us. Stay focused on what matters most.
I’ve been asked, but rabbi, why do we even need to take a stand? Isn’t this too political? Let us remember that when we say nothing, our silence speaks volumes. That, too, is a stand. And do we really think that our Torah, a story all about standing up against oppression followed by a holiness code based in how we treat other human beings is not a political document? Let us not confuse political and partisan. Political need not mean partisan. We are not partisan. But when we become too afraid to delve into the moral and important issues of our day for fear of being too political, that is the day we will have deemed ourselves irrelevant - and Judaism, too. Our namesake, Isaiah never ran from controversy; he boldly asserted the moral truth. The synagogue, the house of worship is meant to transform society, not to limply follow it around, waiting for consensus. We can’t read the Torah’s teaching to love our neighbor as ourselves and then not love.
Can you state that a black life matters just as much as a white one? If yes, then if you have any more ‘but rabbis,’ it’s time to put them aside. If you believe that George Floyd should still be alive today, then you believe that black lives matter. If you believe that Breonna Taylor should still be alive today rather than having been shot dead in her bed on a no-knock warrant on the wrong apartment, then you believe that black lives matter. If you believe that Trayvon Martin should have celebrated his 25th birthday this year instead of being buried now since the age of 17 for nothing other than walking home at night as a black boy, then you believe that black lives matter.
We must say their names, know their names, know their stories. Ahmaud Arbery, Dominique Fells, Riah Milton, Sandra Bland, Philando Castille, Alton Sterling, Renisha McBride, Terence Crutcher, Deborah Danner, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Miles Hall, Michael Brown, the list goes on and on and on and on… Eric Garner who choked out, I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
How can any of us breathe anymore holding onto the knowledge that he could not? This has gone on long enough. We are kotzer ruach, but this time it is because our entire country is in a chokehold – do you feel it?
We are living through dangerous times. Times when Nazis are no longer afraid to be Nazis, conspiracy theorists show up on the ballot and win, and people disappear from the streets after protests. And now abortion access, voting rights, health care, LGBTQ rights, and our environment are all seemingly on the line? The state of our democracy is at stake. But should we despair? No. Giving up is one of the ways others hold power over us. This is not over.
When the sages Rabban Yochanan Ben Zakkai and Rabbi Joshua were walking by the ruins of the Temple, Rabbi Joshua said, “Woe to us that the place where atonement was made for our sins has been destroyed!” But Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai replied, “Don’t you know that we have a means of making atonement that is just as good? Gemilut chasadim – acts of loving-kindness!”[5]
What do we learn from this? We learn that all is not lost and that we have a means to atone for these sins. Even when all is aflame and all is in ruin, acts of love and kindness can set us on the path towards resolution.
Teshuvah for 400 years of slavery and many more of inequality is both a life-long and a multi-generational enterprise. Rabbi Tarfon reminds us that the day is short, and the labor is plenty; we are kotzer ruach, but the reward is great, and God is pressing… We are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are we free to desist from it.[6]
If we haven’t yet committed to the work of living this teshuvah, we must now. And if we already have, we must re-commit. For doing the work of anti-racism is not passive nor a one-time action. You can’t check the box and be done. No, as Ibram X. Kendi teaches us in his book How to Be an Anti-Racist, choosing to be an anti-racist is an active choice you must make every single day. Every day, we are presented with choices – will we lean in the direction of loving-kindness, of atonement or not?
When we hear a racist or homophobic or transphobic or misogynistic or anti-semitic comment, will we use our voice or will we back down because we don’t want to ruin relationships? When we see a person of color being confronted by the police, will we choose to stop whatever it is we are doing to be present, to be a witness, and if necessary, especially if we are white, to use our voices - or will we keep driving by because today is not convenient? When town decisions need to be made, state policies need to be written, national votes need to be cast, will we decide to lean in the direction that will most effectively help those traditionally disenfranchised even when it comes at personal cost – or will self-interest and maintaining the status quo reign supreme?
Racism is a pandemic and we are all carriers. We’re all symptomatic, carrying racism within us. It’s in our words and our actions. It’s in our heads and our hearts. We consciously and unconsciously benefit from a system that values lives differently. And if we are going to make change, we need to reveal that system for what it is and disrupt it.
It is easy to turn a blind eye when we are the beneficiaries of that racist system. It is easy to be deaf to the cries of suffering when we only learn about the world from our carefully curated social media bubbles. But if we are no longer paying attention because it feels so frightening or because we feel powerless or worse, because we have become indifferent, let us remember other times in world history when we became bystanders. As Jewish businesses burned and when political dissidents disappeared from their homes, I am sure we all wished people had paid attention. When someone’s life is on the line – and today, it most certainly is - don’t we want to say that we showed up? When we look back at this moment, will we be proud of the part that we played to bring about change?
And I know you could say, we could all say: I am already out of breath due to this mask of my face. I am already out of breath from managing my kids’ schooling and my job. I am already out of breath because I am struggling for normalcy. I am already out of breath because didn’t you notice the fires, the smoke, the red Martian sky? I’m out of breath from so much. I’m out of breath because Ruth Bader Ginsburg just died and from this election around the corner. And everything, just everything I feel weighing down on me. It’s all on my chest and I just can’t breathe.
When Ruth Bader Ginsburg died right before Rosh HaShanah, I’ll be honest - I just about fell on the floor with the news. And then I remembered, I was about to speak with you. I asked myself, How could I possibly go in there and tell you all to have hope when I felt like my own hope, my own air had just been wrested out of me?
We are all out of breath – I know. But wait. If we wait… you’ll see… there it is - another breath. It turns out that our hearts are still beating after all. Our lungs are still inflating and deflating and inflating. After I picked myself back up off the floor and realized I was still in one piece, I knew what I needed to do. I needed to give thanks to God that I could breathe. And I needed to turn all I had left in me to those who unlike me are at risk every single day of having their breath taken away and never regaining it back. I need to remember how lucky and privileged I am – and fight for those who are not.
Our story is one of resilience. We have picked ourselves off the floor so many times as Jews. We are the exemplars of resilience and resistance. After all, our meta-narrative is all about facing down a tyrant and setting ourselves free. How can we not get involved? We survived Pharaoh and we survived the burning of not just one but two temples. We survived exile after exile after exile. Pogroms and Jewish stars on our sleeves and crematoriums. We have survived so much in order to carry our story of hope and redemption and freedom forward. Let me ask: why do we keep carrying our story forward if not to live it?
The work of racial justice is who we are as Jews because hope and redemption and freedom is our story. We do this work because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We do this work because this is who we are – we are Jews of all colors. We keep bending that moral arc of the universe towards justice because we know what it feels like to be kotzer ruach – and no one should ever feel this way. We do this work because this is what it means to be human beings who care about fellow human beings.
So what do we do? We act. We stop being cautious and start being courageous.
Here at Temple Isaiah, there are many ways that you can get involved in this sacred work. Our Racial Justice team is organizing several education, action, and advocacy initiatives, including, but not limited to our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Taskforce, our civic engagement campaign – vote!, our advocacy work in Sacramento and beyond, and in memory of Mimi Epstein, our upcoming talk in October with Rabbi Sandra Lawson who will speak to her experience as a Jew of color, a rabbi of color and how our Jewish values can help shape our response to this moment.
If you are a white person, this is the time to get to work understanding our privilege and when we do, to use it for positive change. We need to show up and shield. We need to listen and be agitated. And we need to use all the breath that is left in our lungs to demand justice.
This is the moment for all of us to lean in. If you can sit on the phone for an hour every day calling your representatives on issues of racial justice, sit on the phone. If you can march, march. If you can run for office, run. If you can speak up when you hear a friend, a neighbor, a family member using racist language, speak up. If you can organize, please organize. And if you can love, love deeply for loving-kindness is our way to atonement, our way to repair, our way to taking our breath back.
Let us do all of this and more so that we are ready the next time when a Moses comes to tell us that redemption is near. Let us build a nation where none of us are kotzer ruach, none of us are short of breath, a nation where no one can steal our God-given spirit. When indeed we can all say and mean and feel that black lives matter, we will know that redemption is on the horizon. May the day come swiftly when, without fear, we can all breathe again.
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