Yom Kippur Morning Sermon
Rabbi Elizabeth Bolton
October 2, 2006

Betzelem Elohim, Sacrifice and Human Rights

The traditional torah reading for Yom Kippur morning is from Leviticus 16. The book of Leviticus is also known as the Priestly Code, and it details many aspects of the Temple rituals, including extended descriptions of animal sacrifices and other alien-sounding practices.

Today, we read of the High Priest's Yom Kippur rites; he dons special garb and performs expiation and sacrificial rituals for himself, his family and the entire community. They include the confession of the peoples' sins over the head of a goat and sending it off to wilderness to disappear.

This and other aspects of the ancient Israelite cult are disturbing and even offensive to may of us. We recoil from the detailed descriptions of animal parts, potent smells, and inner sanctums where only the vested few could enter.

Yet I am much more repulsed by a contemporary endeavor, involving tremendous sacrifice, greater than that of the ancient cult that we are grateful is no longer our practice - the sacrifice of the dignity and value of human life being perpetrated by our own legislative and executive branches of government.

During Rosh Hashanah, President Bush and key senators negotiated the details of an agreement on the treatment and trial of detainees. The agreement resulted in legislation, introduced in both houses of Congress Monday night, which would, among other things, expand the jurisdiction of military courts to people who have no real connection to the battlefield or even terrorism, deny the bedrock American values of habeas corpus and due process, permit coerced testimony in court, and immunize perpetrators of past detainee abuses.

Former U.S. attorney Thomas Sullivan, who has represented Guantanamo detainees, spoke to thunderous applause when he testified to the Senate, saying: "I believe that if this bill is passed with these habeas-stripping provisions in it, then after I am dead and the members of this Senate hearing are dead, an apology will be made, just as we did for the incarceration of the Japanese citizens in the Second World War. This is shameful and it is momentous."

As of this past Thursday, the bill has passed both houses of Congress, and with very few elements to reconcile, awaits the President's signature.

The bill:

• Still leaves uncertain whether torture and cruel interrogation methods may be used by the CIA, by admission of the very Senators who took a lead in the struggle against torture.

• Still prohibits U.S. federal courts from hearing suits based on violation of the Geneva Conventions, for past as well as future suits.

• Still allows the government to keep secret "sources and methods or activities" by which it obtained evidence against the accused. This provision effectively allows the government to keep secret its interrogation techniques. Coupled with the provision that allows for the admission of evidence obtained through coercion, this provision undermines the prohibition elsewhere in the bill against cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

THIS IS WHAT IS BEING SACRIFICED TODAY:

- the bedrock American values of habeas corpus and due process,

- the safety of our troops and civilians abroad, today and in the future; and

- our nation's international standing.

The enshrined Jewish concept of human dignity derives from our Creation narrative. "Let us make the human being in Our image," reads Genesis 1:26, and the text continues, betzelem elohim, in the Divine Image, were humans created. (1:27)

Traditional Rabbinic literature then employs the term kvod ha-briot, the dignity of created beings, alluding to the Creator as the source of human dignity and grounding the requirement to protect human dignity in the divine origins of the human being.

The essence of the term kvod habriot signals a form of unqualified, universal respect for human beings as such, intrinsic to their existence as human beings, whether old or young, sick or healthy, tsaddik (righteous person) or rasha (criminal), independent of social status, identity, or context.

Halakhic sources, meanwhile, concur that kvod habriot is one of the overarching values of Jewish tradition; from the voices I have hear this week from some of our country's lawmakers, it is also a cornerstone of our country's values.

Following the Senate vote on Thursday, Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd rose to remind colleagues that 60 years ago this week the war crimes trial of Nuremberg reached its first verdicts

"We've been known as the nation of Nuremburg," he said. "My fear is now that we will be knows as the nation of Guantanamo and I worry about that."

Senator Patrick Leahy picked up the thread in his comments: "What in heaven's name has happened to the conscience and the moral compass of this nation… will we tear down all the structures of liberty of this country?"

What is humane and what's not, what's right and what's wrong, the core value of respect of human dignity or, as our traditional texts call it, kvod habriot, is now being discussed by our nations lawmakers. (And lest this be heard as a bi-partisan critique, let me mention Senator Arlen Specter, the Republican sponsor of a failed amendment to protect the habeus corpus rights of all under American detention.)

One senator suggested that this bill's vote was timed for scoring political points. I consider it to have been timed for us appreciate the timelessness and relevance of our Torah reading to this very day and its times.

In 2004, the great American novelist Philip Roth published The Plot Against America, with this seemingly implausible scenario at its center: the election, in the 1940 presidential election, of Nazi sympathizer Charles A Lindbergh over FDR. During Lindbergh's administration, Jewish families are, legally of course, relocated, through the Office of American Absorption, scattered across the country, pulled away from jobs, homes, and family. New laws are enacted that rob citizens of their civil rights and fuel mob actions and civil unrest.

It is a remarkable piece of literature, written not by a polemicist but a great man of American letters. Yet its relevance touches us, intimately, as I hope today's readings may, as well, through our group aliyot and the metaphors its story evokes.

Before this final text I want to quote prior our Torah reading, I want to acknowledge its source, also the source of the some of the above notes on politics and halakha - Rabbi for Human Rights - North America. RHR-NA has been engaged in a campaign called "Honor the Image of God: A Jewish Campaign to Stop Torture Now." I continue to be proud to be associated with this extraordinary group, and encourage you to read their literature and consider joining their efforts to retain or restore human rights in this country, and in Israel. [http://www.rhr-na.org/torture/tortureresources.html]

We chanted last night, right after Kol Nidre:

VAYOMER ADONAI SALACHTI KI-DVARECHA -- And God says, I have pardoned because of your words.

God willing, we and all people will find consolation in this season... Perhaps the strongest nechemta, comfort to the powerlessness we feel at violence on many fronts is to speak out somewhere for the kind of world we all wish to live in. There can be great comfort in raising our individual voices, especially in concert with so many rabbis and Jewish leaders, to call for an end to US-sponsored torture and mistreatment of detainees. As we do so we learn that these cruel interrogation practices were built slowly and methodically on a scaffolding of words. And our words can help bring them to an end...

May our words, our prayers, our witnessing and blessing of Torah this morning, guide is to honor and reflect in all that we do betzelem elohim and kevod habriot, honor and dignity to all Creation.