Difficult Words
Rabbi's Message
Rabbi Elizabeth Bolton
Yom Kippur 5766
October 13, 2005

"More Jews attend more services for more hours during the High Holy Days than at any other time of the year."

These are not, as you might be expecting, words of chastisement, but are rather taken from the introduction to our own mahzor, and were written by Rabbi David A. Teutsch, editor of the Kol Haneshamah prayer book series, and past president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.

He continues:
"Much of the liturgy that developed in response to that reality came into existence later than the Shabbat or weekday liturgy. Therefore, more freedom in selecting among the myriad of High Holy Day liturgical choices exists for liturgists. This mahzor has retained the piyutim (Hebrew liturgical poems) that are easily sung, those whose meaning is clear and thematically helpful to the worshippers who will use this book, and those to which many people have strong emotional attachements. In eliminating the least accessible piyutim, we have made space for contemporary and classical Hebrew poetry, new liturgical compositions, meditations and commentary.

In other words, in our mahzor, much is left out, yet you still have in your hands, on your lap, or beside you a hefty tome, filled with words. The heft, if not in weight, certainly in ink and syllables, used to dismay me as a child. Even though I was attracted to Judaism, and wanted to be in shul, I would listen to the hazzen, follow along as best I could from the women's section, and inwardly remark - "there are this many pages to go before we finish?!?"

What does this say about integrity of our worship services, the experience of communal prayer, and the legacy we want to give to future generations? My focus here today is not belief but language. We are very concerned, in our congregation, and our denomination, about a bottom line of integrity: we have to be able to say what we mean and mean what we say, even in metaphoric language.

A colleague recently explained how he avoided excessively lengthy services on the High Holy Days - by leaving out the comments that endeavor to explain the less accessible texts, or illuminate the metaphors.

"Though I like these for what they add in terms of highlighting or evoking certain ideas that may not be easily apparent in the liturgy I, nevertheless, find them very time consuming. I've also decided that since they are essentially an explanation of the metaphors in the liturgy. It is a rule of thumb that it is not good to explain metaphors. If they work, or how they work, is subjective. Ultimately, I believe that it is better for each person to decide for themselves what the metaphor means."
[Rabbi H. A. Cohen; email message]

Herein lies the balancing act between those two aspects of the mahzor that Rabbi Teutsch identifies in his introduction: the material whose meaning is clear, and the material to which we may have an emotional attachment - which, by deduction, may likely bear meaning that is less clear.

Words bear more than their meaning. They bear history, heritage, experience, culture, context, inflection, intention and more. For our prayer services to be meaningful to us, today, the words we say must resonate as one or more of these levels. We have some level of consensus, though my no means is it all explicit, that excess verbiage, and extended passages in un-translated and un-transliterated Hebrew are treated as inauthentic, and do not represent a legacy we wish to pass on. YET -we respect the roots and authenticity of the enterprise, and endeavor to claim, reclaim and refract our present moment through the framework of those many, many sometimes un-understood, and sometimes, misunderstood, words.

This is indeed the primary day of the Jewish year to solve big problems and in stubborn, stiff-necked fashion - do you perhaps recognize the phrase from the liturgy? Anu azy famin … we read it aloud this morning; I chanted it in Hebrew last night, and did so deliberately in lieu of a kavanah in English prior to the Ashamnu, the communal confessional.

To live through it, not wholly creating anew, yet renewing and thus experiencing the old. This is truly then one of the meanings of verse from Lamentation that we explored on Rosh Hashanah, from our Torah service every week, and in our liturgy today - hashivenu Adonay elekha venashuvah, hadesh yameynu kekedem - Return us to you and we shall engage in TESHUVAH; RENEW our days as of yore.

In stiff-necked fashion, then, I'm tackling the subject of cognition.
"In the traditional analyses, words in literal expressions denote what they mean according to common or dictionary usage, while words in figurative expressions connote additional layers of meaning. When the human ear or eye receives the message, the mind must interpret the data to convert it into meaning. This involves the use of a cognitive framework which is made up of memories of all the possible meanings that might be available to apply to the particular words in their context. This set of memories will give prominance to the most common or literal meanings, but also suggest reasons for attributing different meanings..."
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literal_and_figurative_language]

Within this framework, I want to highlight for our consideration together, and perhaps your own private introspection, three words. Each is fraught with layers and claims, and must unavoidably be grappled with by every conscious 21st century Jew.

The first word is Zionism, the word that in 1975, the United Nations attempted explicitly to redefine. Until 1991, a General Assembly resolution by that international body declared that Zionism equals Racism. For sixteen years officially and presumably many more before and since, the word Zionism has, in many circles beyond those measured and controlled by its advocates, Zionism has instantly denoted, as well as connoted, an association with a negative and repugnant value.

Much ink has been spilled, much effort pressed, from right and left, from centrist and from a-political sources, culturally-based groups and spokespeople, to ensure that the distinction between Jewish people and the Jewish state; between Judaism and Israel; between the prevailing government of Israel and the people of that country is expressed, retained, and understood.

I astonished myself when, upon contemplating this subject, I wrote that at the time of the Munich massacre in 1972, terrorists

identified with the Black September movement weren't making such a distinction. Those 11 athletes, as Israelis, represented the Jewish state; the hatred and de-humanizing of those trapped and murdered in the athlete's village was rooted in the expression of their Jewish-ness manifested by their citizenship in, and representation of, a Jewish state in the family of nation/states.

I want to try to short-circuit the currents that may be firing for you in this moment, address the adrenalin that may be surging - as it does in me - when I hear words and phrases that appear to threaten one's core stance vis-à-vis one's own Jewish identity and its link to Israel by declaring that we will not here address meta-questions about Zionism, such as how to define it, which strand represents "true" Zionism, whether one is one or not, and so on.

Our questions today are still in the realm of those posed about our liturgy:
What can we say, and where can we stand while remaining true to the value concepts we hold dear and wish to see prevail and flourish?

In other forums, I hope we can consider the IDEA of Israel, the idea of its relationship to the United States and other world governments and entities; the history of the Zionist enterprise and the issues of citizenship, loyalty and peoplehood that challenge Jewish outside of Israel. At minimum, I will contend that we have an obligation to face these issues, and to listen to each other, just as I believe with all my heart that in order to transform the present conflict from its deadly perpetuity, both side, and the world, must understand and accept that more than one people has a claim to its land. And when two peoples' narratives conflict, the only certainty is that we may not pass through the conflict without speaking, and hearing, those narratives.

This leads me, slowly, down a path towards my second word. To speak one's narrative, to tell one's story about origins, familial or national, means to use language as a boundary. Language sets the borders of identity, for it is the way we deliver, order, and record our identity. Language can reflect present, or changed, consciousness about where we stand in the world - think again of the UN resolution. Who speaks, and names, identity, literally "occupies" it.

Hence multi-lingualism reflects potential to occupy if not different or multiple identities, at least to wear them, cloak oneself in them, to enter that precinct with some degree of authenticity. As you know, if you speak more than one language, and as you increased you degree of familiarity and fluency, you were then more able to navigate within that country or culture, and enter increasingly intimate realm of connection with people who live in its borders. At that moment, where did you reside?

Torah my second word, opens up this question, and more: can we speak the language of Torah, engaging in it, as we do, in this country's mother tongue? Can we do so while entering into cross-cultural communications? From a progressive, pluralistic, evolving religious identity?

Let me restate these questions as a statement:
-we must speak the language of torah, in this country's mother tongue, and engage in cross-cultural communications from a progressive religious identity.

We have no choice. Torah and the Bible, as words, concepts, ideas, certainly have come to connote far more than they denote. They have been bludgeons for hate, and instill trepidation itself into our mouths when we wish to use and claim them.

Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourner Magazine and author most recently of God's Politics: A Vision for Faith and Politics in America bewails the hijacking of faith language to prop up specific political agendas in this country. His book, and his life's work, is a bi-lingual shofar call to our community to wake up and reclaim Torah as the cornerstone of a prophetic and progressive religious vision of love, justice and equality, rather than allow it to be claimed and used to legislate terms of hate, discrimination and inequality.

As our Torah services draw to a close, and before we plead "return us, renew us" we chant a verse from Proverbs: ki lekakh tov natati lakhem, torati - al ta'azovu. It is a precious teaching I have given you. Don't abandon it - it is my Torah.

Torah leads us inevitably, inexorably, to our third word, in English, so bald and un-poetic, inescapably pithy, yet laden with far more resonance than the one syllable can bear: God.

Like the rabbinic colleague quoted above, I find myself drawn to simply let the word stand. We say it, we name our world, and its mysterious elements, as having their source in this … force of the divine to which we give this name. As with Zionism, and with Torah, those who name it loudest and with the most power seem to claim the power of definition.

We can, and must, continue to sing these words, and mean them, without embarrassment about the metaphor, about being heard and seen chanting something about a book, and inheritance and a source with a name we can't ultimately define. We abandon them at our peril, and at the peril of those who need truth-sayers who are able and willing to cross borders and act in good faith.

This I believe:

- in Israel - that we can stand for and with a country, founded on principles named tsionut, Zionism, with integrity, calling all who will hear to conscience about how two peoples must be willing to cross borders and act in good faith

- in Torah - that our stories and teachings are a legacy worth claiming, that its visions of nations, of women, of life and laws are an inheritance that we continue to learn from and study, in order that our world may be transformed for the good of all

-in God - in ultimate unity, in the sanctity of all life as it is written: betzelem elohim we were created, in the image of God. The Hasidic masters said in Yiddish, alles iz Gott.

I say too:

WE MUST take a stand. We must stake OUR claim to this language. Zionism is not racism. Torah does not kill. God is not evil. Religious ideologies and faith language are simply containers for belief. Faith is how we practice what we believe.

Persons render sacredness in the human realm.
Does this seem too obvious to articulate?
God dwells in whatever form we name!
Our faith in the actuality and viability of that form makes for religion.
Its goodness, or harmfulness, is entirely in human hands.

We don't pretend to Make God in Our Image - we only express the God-concept with the limited human tools at our disposal: language and metaphor, history and stories, art and music.

I am inevitably drawn to song to express what is at my core. Opera is my former métier, stories with music. A song can be a mini-opera, a saga. This message closes with the words of Holly Near, as sung in English and Yiddish by Adrienne Cooper and the Klezmatics. The recording's title, Rise Up!/Shteyt Oyf!, is drawn from a line in this song, "I Ain't Afraid," and underscores the ethos of the whole CD, and their message, as introduced in their liner notes:

RISE UP Free from Fear …
We heard a prayer to a merciful higher power to deliver us and redeem us. Some of the prayers had words, and some raced up from the guts of trees and the hearts of men. Some were about making a better world, with the ghostly voice of a Yiddish poet inciting us to get out and build the barricades … and there was a love song to the Holy Tongue of the Jewish ...
RISE UP my darling, my fair one, and come away …
Rabbi Akiva insisted that this hymn of love belonged in the TaNaKH…
Some people still wonder to this day what it's doing there. Shouldn't the sacred be segregated from the secular, blocked off in its own special preserve? Does music even belong in that sacred space? …
The walls of the Temple are down, and we seek to build our sacred space wherever we can. We build with one eye on the past, which ties us to the eternal, which leads us to the future. We want to build a better world, which means learning to see this one clearly. We make poetry to describe where we're going, because in creating we fulfill ourselves in the image of God who made heaven and earth, and you can't make something real until you can imagine it. That goes for justice; that goes for love.
And so we rise up.
[Ellen Kusher, liner notes to The Klezmatics Rise Up!/Shtey Oyf!]

I AIN'T AFRAID
Words and Music by Holly Near

I ain't afraid of your Yahweh
I ain't afraid of your Allah
I ain't afraid of your Jesus
I'm afraid of what you do in the name of your god

I ain't afraid of your churches
I ain't afraid of your temples
I ain't afraid of your praying
I'm afraid of what you do in the name of your god

Rise up to your higher power
Free up from fear, it will devour you
Watch out for the ego of the hour
The ones who say they know it are the ones who will impose it on you

Rise up and fight a higher story
Free up from the gods of war and glory
Watch out for the threats of purgatory
The spirit of the wind won't make a killing of a sin or Satan

I ain't afraid of your Sunday
I ain't afraid of your spirit
I ain't afraid of your teachers
I'm afraid of what you do in the name of your god

I ain't afraid of your Sabbath
I ain't afraid of your borders
I ain't afraid of your dances
I'm afraid of what you do in the name of your god

I ain't afraid of your Bible
I ain't afraid of your Torah
I ain't afraid of your Koran
Don't let the letter of the law obscure the spirit of your love, it's killing us

I ain't afraid of your children
I ain't afraid of your music
I ain't afraid of your stories
I'm afraid of what you do in the name of your god

I ain't afraid of your money
I ain't afraid of your culture
I ain't afraid of your choices
I'm afraid of what you do in the name of your god
RISE UP!