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Erev Yom Kippur 5763: “The Power of Life”

(by Rabbi Howard L. Apothaker)

This sermon is copyrighted to Rabbi Howard L. Apothaker, Ph.D.

NO REDISTIBUTION OR REPUBLICATION IS PERMITTED.

This week marked the first Yahrzeit of the day our world as Americans was turned upside down with the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. While I participated in person in two events, this year the most powerful expression of commemoration I saw took the form of the New York Times’ “Portraits of Grief.” Day after day, month after month, The Times wrote a brief biography of the life of the nearly 3000 who had died at the World Trade Center, capturing the individual losses — the dreams, hopes and aspirations of young and old people; blue collar and bankers — real people. Statistics, monuments and exhibits could not compare with this memorial. It spoke of life, not death.

That is our way — not what happens when we die, but what happens when we live. And so we learned of people like Timothy Haskell who followed his father’s footsteps and became a firefighter. So did his brother, Thomas. Both died trying to save others. All of the nearly 3000 who were lost were “extraordinary in an ordinary sort of way.” Each of them a “one-of-a kind.” That is what the Talmud implies when it teaches: “One who saves one life, it is as if he saved an entire world.”

We owe it to each to honor their lives, one by one. That’s the powerful message of the U’netaneh Tokef prayer. It’s not just the world, but each and every one of us, one by one, “as a shepherd musters his flock . . . so do You pass and record, count and visit every living soul.”

But, while honoring life, this year we have experienced the celebration of death:

• the Palestinian baby photographed wearing a mock suicide bomber’s uniform, complete with sticks of “explosives” and the traditional suicide bomber’s red headband;
• the mother of Mohammed Farahat, killed in March when he murdered five teenage students, who, when people came to offer condolences to her, said, “I don’t want condolences, I want congratulations.”
• a leader in Al Qaeda who said after Sept. 11th, “The Americans love Pepsi Cola. We love death.”

There are those, as at a London Mosque this week, who celebrated 9/11 as a day of victory in death. There are those in Gaza who joined the crowd in applauding the mass murder at a Hebrew University lunch room because its patrons are Jewish. Such murders make them happy.

But an even more insightful comment came from Hamas official Ismail Haniye, who in ONE SENTENCE captured our with these words: “Jews love life more than any other people.” To this Hamas official, the Jews’ love of life is a weakness. It was the hope that if they kill enough of us, our morale will be shattered and we will give up.

He’s wrong on what he expects to happen. But he’s right about the Jewish people when he says that we “love life more than any other people.” And it is that love of life that has been our strength and has been our glory.

To Jews, death is the ultimate impurity. When we return from a cemetery we wash our hands to symbolize renewal and rebirth. We eat eggs to symbolize that we nevertheless go on with life. You visit the famous churches in Europe and you’ll see the saints buried there. No Jew is buried in a synagogue. Ours is a religion of life! If a funeral procession and a wedding procession intersect, the funeral procession stops . . . the wedding proceeds. Life takes precedence! On most any and every issue, Jewish law is on the side of life. Saving a life supercedes most every other mitzvah. That is why our halakhah might constrain abortion-on-demand, but gives free reign to stem cell research … because it promotes life.

Ours is a people who, on the holiest days of the year, proclaim those words: “Zochreinu l’chayim Melech chafetz ba-chayim v’chot-veinu b’sefer ha-chaim l’ma’ancha Elohim chayim — Remember us for life, O Sovereign, who desires life and inscribe us in the Book of Life, for your sake O God of Life.” This one sentence repeated throughout the High Holy Days (and especially on Yom Kippur in which, what with fasting and so on, we re-enact aspects of death) … the sentence repeated time and again has the word “life” in it four times. Indeed, we are the people who in times of joy raise our glass and proclaim that one word that says it all: L’Chaim!

This has been a painful and tragic year for the Jewish people. Virulent Jew-hatred and dehumanization has become, for the Muslim Middle East, the central unifying theme of society. From the schoolrooms to the mosques to the daily papers, Palestinians teach, preach, write and paint in praise of genocide. Even leaders like the much-feted Sari Nusseibeh argue against suicide bombings not because they are morally reprehensible, but because there is no “political benefit” that accrues from killing Jewish civilians. With no moral judgment, only a cost-benefit analysis, we learn that killing Jews is acceptable is quite simply taken for granted.

Tragically, all has been made worse by Europeans. The action in Jenin is a good example.

Following upon UN Middle East envoy, Norwegian, Terje Roed-Larsen’s announcement that Israeli action to root out terrorist cells was “horrifying beyond belief,” Phil Reeves of the London Independent called it “a monstrous war crime that Israel has tried to cover up.” London’s Evening Standard, as did the President of the Greek Parliament (the country that shipped the largest percentage of their Jewish population — more than Poland, more than Germany — to their death in the 1940’s), called it “genocide.” The UK Guardian adding that it was “every bit as repellent” as the attack on the World Trade Center. “Atrocities,” said European Union Commissioner for External Affairs, Chris Patton. “Crimes against humanity” said the Swedish Foreign Minister and a non-waffling Belgian Prime Minister. And Janine di Giovanni of the London Times opined: “Rarely in more than a decade of war reporting from Bosnia, Chechnya, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, have I seen such deliberate destruction, such disrespect for human life.” And that’s because she didn’t see it at all. They all lied. They know it.

When a UN report confirmed that fifty-two had died in the raid, and that the majority of the deaths were armed combatants, Canada’s National Post, understated the anti-semitic fabrication in an editorial: “As the UN report demonstrates, it was all a horrible fairy tale…. Fewer innocent civilians were killed in Jenin than in the March 27 Passover suicide bombing that instigated Israel’s West Bank invasion. Odd, isn’t it,” the paper continued, “that there was no enthusiasm in the UN for an investigation of that incident?”

Is it really a New World we’re living in? What the world saw race across Europe this year was raw, unadulterated anti-semitism. Manifestations and expressions of it were found in most every country on the European continent.

• There were over 700 anti-semitic incidents in France in the first five months of this year. So no one was surprised when Parisian demonstrators held posters proclaiming, “Death to the Jews” or when, in the city of Lyon, a car was rammed into a synagogue and set on fire.

• In England, Jewish sites are being vandalized, a shul was burned twice and traditionally-garbed Jews have been assaulted. British scientists have encouraged other scientists not to exchange informa-tion with Israeli scientists. Anti-Semitic rhetoric has increased on college campuses and in the media. The cover of The New Statesman, a left wing magazine, depicted a large Star of David stabbing the Union Jack. Still, there has been no outcry, no loud, clear protest from British leaders. In fact, A.N. Wilson, a prominent British writer and editor, wrote in the Evening Standard — an important London newspaper — that he had concluded that Israel no longer had a right to exist.
• In Norway there is an unofficial boycott of Israeli products. And a Norse Nobel Peace Committee member said she would like to withdraw the Prize that was given to Shimon Peres — not Arafat, mind you, but Shimon Peres.
• In Holland, anti-Israel demonstrators shouted “Sieg Heil” and “Jews into the sea” while carrying swastikas and photos of Hitler.
• In Belgium, the chief rabbi was beaten, his attackers kicking him in the face and calling him “a dirty Jew.” Two synagogues in Brussels were firebombed.

• The respected Italian daily La Stampa depicted a baby Jesus looking up from the manger at an Israeli tank, saying, “Don’t tell me they want to kill me again.”
• Portuguese Nobel laureate, Jose Saramago compared Ramallah to Auschwitz; by extension, Israel is the Third Reich and deserves extinction.
• Denmark challenged the credentials of a new Israeli ambassador because he once served in Israel’s security. And the Lutheran bishop in Denmark delivered a sermon in the Copenhagen Cathedral comparing Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians to those of King Herod, who ordered the slaughter of all male children under the age of two in Bethlehem.
• And who could forget Germany: August 11: Residents near Olympic stadium in Munich raise PLO flags as relatives of 11 Israelis murdered in 1972 visit site. In downtown Berlin, a rabbinical student is beaten up and in the town of Herford vandals wrote on the Synagogue wall: “Six million were not enough.”

And all this is coming not from Moslem countries, countries where a sadistic anti-semitism is now the official doctrine of most Arab governments. No, it’s amongst the Christians.

Of course, there are those who will claim that all this is not anti-semitism, they have nothing against the Jewish people . . . this is just meant as criticism of the State of Israel.

Well, I have one word to tell them: FUHGEDDABOUDIT! There are conflicts taking place in countries all over the world, from Tibet to Rwanda. You didn’t see our European critics focusing on them! Russia bombed civilians in Chechnya and China oppresses the people in Tibet … you don’t hear cries of outrage about them! You don’t hear the Europeans comparing their actions to those of the Nazis! Only regarding one state do you hear its actions being described as “massacres” . . . “atrocities” . . . “Auschwitz-like executions” . . . “Zionist SS . .”

You only hear it about ONE state: the one Jewish State! The first line of a newspaper article two weeks ago said it all. Listen: “Thousands of anti-globalization protesters marched Sunday on the UN’s World Summit on Sustainable Development, supporting land distribution, debt forgiveness and full employment and denouncing free trade, privatization and Israel.” Just Israel! Not Iraq, North Korea, Syria, Iran. Just Israel! And it’s coming from a people who should know better! Those who promised that they would be better after the Holocaust. They were silent when the Nazis killed us . . . they’re silent now.

Reacting to an op-ed piece in the Baltimore Sun by Sherrilyn Ifill in which she criticized the Christian world for its silence in not criticizing Israel for its siege of the Church of the Nativity, a reader reacted, “The real question is: why has the Christian world

• remained silent when armed murderers had taken over such a sacred site?
• remained silent when, for years now, terrorizers wrecked havoc at Rachel’s Tomb in the holy city of Bethlehem?
• remained silent when Muslims trashed Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus, destroyed the ancient synagogue in Jericho, and used the Temple Mount for rock throwing on Jews at the Western Wall?
• remained silent when the Arab media and “street” declare on a regular basis that Jews torture and murder non-Jewish children to use their blood for sacred rituals?
• remain silent, when at Camp David, Yasser Arafat declared that Jerusalem has no religious significance to the Jews, and that there has never been a Jewish temple there. Shouldn’t Christians the world over have cried out: “If so, then where did Jesus walk?”

Don’t get me wrong. Europeans have shown their appreciation especially to a certain class of Jews, Jews whom they admire and pay tribute to. You know who they are? Dead Jews! Travel over Eastern Europe: Hungary, Poland. . . there are all kinds of museums and memorials being erected in honor of the Jewish contribution to these countries. Near Bialystok, whole shtetl of Tykocin has been restored; it’s got everything: everything but Jews! We celebrate life; they honor us when we are dead!

Good news, however: Right when all of us as Jews were confronted with the words of UN Secretary General, Kofi Anan, who said, “Is it possible that Israel is right and the whole world is wrong?” — right at that moment, one man stood up and said: Yes, Israel is right . . . and the world is wrong. And that man was the President of the United States, George W. Bush.

These words he directed to the people of the State of Israel: “You have lived too long with fear and funerals, having to avoid markets and public transportation and forced to put armed guards in kindergarten classrooms. The Palestinian Authority has rejected your offer at hand and traffics with terrorists. You have a right to a normal life; you have a right to security.” Notice, friends, the word “life,” “You have a right to a normal life.”

Both of our countries are democracies. Both of our countries are of immigrants who came looking for a freer life. And both our countries share a vibrancy and a zest for life. Who says? Osama bin Laden said: “Americans love life.” And like with the Jewish people, he thought that that was a weakness. But it is our strength! The strength of both America and Israel, countries that have political parties, freedom of the press, rights of dissent, religious freedom . . . countries whose way of life is dedicated to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

We have our flaws, Americans and Jews, Jewish Americans. Not all of us are saints, as many of those caught in the Enron-like scandals show. But in a world where most everyone cherishes being able to tell us just how bad we are, it’s important for us to remind ourselves and our children of just how good we are. Kofi Anan asked, “Can the whole world be wrong and the Jewish people be right?”

And the answer is … Yes. It’s happened so many times before.

1. For nearly 2000 years the Christian world said that the Jewish people collectively were guilty for Jesus’ death. Now they admit they were wrong!
2. During World War II, when Jewish leaders begged the White House and the allied forces to do something to save the Jews, the allies said: “First let’s save democracy, then we’ll save the Jews. They were wrong! By the time they saved democracy, 6 million Jews were gone.
3. In 1981, when the Israeli Air Force destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor, the whole world, including then-President Ronald Reagan, criticized Israel. Ten years later during the Gulf War his vice-president, and twenty years later, his vice-president’s son know realized they were wrong.
4. In March of this year the whole world joined in a chorus proclaiming that Israel had committed a massacre in Jenin. Even harsh critics now admit they were wrong.

When it comes to the Jews, the world has been wrong again and again and again. Yes, again we make our mistakes! But that’s just what they are — mistakes! Israelis have killed innocent Palestinians by accident, as have Americans, by the killing of forty-six Afghanis and the wounding of many more at a wedding recently showed. The difference is, others kill innocent Israelis on purpose! We as Jews and Americans hang our heads in shame when innocent civilians are killed.

We are different! And we teach our children to be different! When attacked, we’ll fight back, but we’re truly sorry for the mess we make. This isn’t what we want to be doing. We don’t want to have to kill or be killed. We want to live! And to help others live! That’s what our people have always done. And the record is there for all to see.

Sympathy is shown to the Palestinian suicide bombers by justifying or understanding their actions as being those of a frustrated and hopeless people. Well, let me tell you about a people who had every reason in the world to feel frustrated and hopeless and angry and desperate. They were the Jewish people right after the Holocaust! Six million of their family had been killed, their homes and possessions had been seized, they were displaced, forgotten, abandoned … did they go and kill innocent European children on buses because they felt desperate? No, we went and built a land!

• They had no history of large-scale agriculture or agricultural infrastructure. They built farms in a wasteland and show others how to do it too.
• They had no army or history of organized combat. They built one of the most ballyhooed armies on earth.
• They had no common language. They took our ancient language and made it a living language of the everyday street.
• They had little in the way of Western education. Indeed, so many of our best minds were annihilated within the memory of living survivors. But still they built or built up The Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, Haifa University, Ben Gurion and Bar Ilan, the Weizmann Institute and the Technion, the Bezalel Academy for art, the Rubin Academy for music — these and other world class academic and arts institutions for the life of the mind, the life of the spirit, the spirit of life.
• They had no tradition of democracy — and, despite being under a continual state of siege throughout their history, and existing amidst a miasma of deadly dictatorships, they have built a living democracy.

America has allies on its borders and all over the world. The only nation in the world which shares its language with no other nation, its history with no one else, has no recognized borders, no international recognition of its official medical emblem (Magen David Adom), no capital city that the world accepts, and no natural allies in the region in which it exists. And yet they celebrate life.

I came across a fascinating list. It’s a list of the winners of Jewish Nobel Prize winners! Since 1908, and at less than .1% of the population of the world, Jews have won the prize for Medicine in more than half the years it has been awarded. That’s a celebration of life, in William James’ words: “The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.” One generation after the final solution to the “Jewish problem,” “Am Yisrael chai” — we are alive once again! And we are contributing to life.

Jew-hatred, noted historian Joseph Klausner, arose, in part, because of our affirmation of life. Let them hate us for that. We defy death; we defy them; we love life.

This year we marked the passing of Gerhart Riegner, the World Jewish Congress official, who, in August 1942 sent a cable to warn an incredulous, and tragically unmoved, world that Nazi Germany had formally decided at the highest levels to annihilate Europe’s Jews.

I wish to urge you tonight to do a mitzvah before Sukkot this coming weekend — to communicate to members of our government — from the White House, through the Congress and even among local representatives — how appreciative you are of this holy alliance among those who would promote life. Please note that you are concerned with the emergent anti-semitism in Europe. And tell them how much you support those who support freedom, democracy and life.

I have also placed out on tables some suggestions for helping our cousins in the State of Israel.

Earl Warren, one-time Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court once said: “Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile I caught Hell for.” I am asking you tonight to do something worthwhile and catch Heaven for it. I ask you as Americans and as Jews to continue to promote life, to clear away the details and to support those and that which promotes life, to be a light unto the nations who will, for its efforts, be remembered for life, written and sealed in the Book of Life, by the God of Life. We know that is God’s will and we pray for the strength to fulfil it. Amen.