September 24th: Sukkot
THIS WEEK IN THE TORAH
Rabbi David E. Ostrich
This is Rabbi Ostrich’s Kol Nidre D’var Torah.
As much as we Jews are individuals living in our own times and places, we also know that we are part of a long and continuing historical tradition, a sacred process in which we are the heirs of the ancients and the progenitors of Judaism’s future. There are many expressions of this sense of tradition, but we need go no further than the opening words of our Amidah. We praise God Who is: “Our God and God of our Fathers and Mothers.”
The relationship we have with the Eternal One is both individual and communal, both modern and generational. Moreover, we are directed to consider the particular relationships our forebears had with our Creator. “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob; God of Sarah, God of Rebekah, God of Rachel, and God of Leah.”
It has been asked why we say “God of” before each name. It is not like there are many gods—a different one for Abraham and a different one for Isaac, etc. So, why do we not say,
“God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah?”
The reason is that each Matriarch and each Patriarch came to his or her own personal understanding of God and developed his or her own relationship with God.
The same can be said of our relationships with God; though there are certainly communal commonalities, each one of us sees God through our unique set of eyes and relates to God in our own ways. Some of our non-Jewish neighbors speak of a personal God, and we can agree. God has always had a personal relationship with each and every Jew—seeing each of us as an individual and precious child. This is the Jewish Tradition.
When we pray the Amidah, we are focusing on God, but what if we turn the camera around and consider God’s view of our developing family? Think of God noticing the generational line from Abraham and Sarah to Isaac and Rebekah, and then to Jacob and Leah and Rachel. While having an individual relationship with each Matriarch and Patriarch, God also must have had a sense of how the line is doing. God loves the line—loves the family, but God is also aware and evaluative about how the family is doing at any point in time.
It is in some ways how sports fans love a team and then follow the team over the years, remembering the years that were good and those that were not so great. Some of you may remember the 1982 and the 1986 Penn State Nittany Lions who won the national championship and also the 1984 Nittany Lions who went 6-5, losing to Alabama, Notre Dame, and Pittsburgh. Fans loved the team regardless, but there is always an awareness of how the team is doing. Could God be looking at us the same way?
I can imagine God looking at us on Yom Kippur and thinking, “I wonder how the Jews will do this year.”
There is a tendency to see the Patriarchs and Matriarchs as continually and consistently heroic—that every year was a saintly one for them. Even in cases where a one of them seems to falter, the Rabbis of the Midrash recast the story to show that our ancestor is right and holy at every step along the way. Jacob is perhaps the best example for he seems, at first look, to have some major behavioral flaws. He stingily demands Esau’s birthright in exchange for some lentil stew, and, in a more dramatic and morally felonious incident, tricks his old blind father and steals Esau’s blessing. The Rabbis of the Midrash, however, cannot imagine a Patriarch or Matriarch ever behaving in a less than holy and proper manner, so they invent an evil characterization for Esau and cast Rebekah and Jacob as saving the Jewish people from him.
While this always a hero approach increases the stature of our ancient forebears, something about it does not ring true. Is it reasonable to think that the Patriarchs and Matriarchs were always right, always in control, and always on moral high ground? For building myths, this may work, but, for presenting humans with whom we can relate, some commentators see a greater value in contemplating the struggles of our ancestors as they went through the same competing priorities and temptations that we experience. Are they heroic because everything they did was right? Or, are they heroic because, in the messiness and frustration of life, they were able to muster nobility and morality some of the time, perhaps growing as people and improving?
Let’s go back to our example of Jacob, an ancestor whom we can well view as a work in progress. As a youngster and a young adult, Jacob thinks he can get by on fast talking— finagling his way into Esau’s birthright and blessing. There is even a passage where he tries to finagle God. In Genesis 28, when Jacob beholds the ladder between Heaven and Earth, God appears and promises Jacob a great life. Jacob sort of accepts God’s largesse but with conditions: “If God remains with me, if God protects me on this journey... giving me bread to eat and clothing to wear, and if I return safe to my father’s house, then I’ll accept the Lord as my God.” That’s chutzpah! That’s impudence. It may not be admirable, but it is Jacob, an insecure, fast-talking kid who has some growing-up to do. He thinks he can get by on his wits until he meets his Uncle Laban, a master at the craft of finagling, and, boy, does Jacob pay the price. He is married to the wrong sister. He is cheated of his labor and livestock. He tries to steal away with his wives and children, but Laban catches them, and, in a conflict over stolen idols, Jacob inadvertently curses his beloved Rachel and brings about her death. Of Jacob, one could say that One who lives by the finagle gets finagled by a better finagler.
It is only after these many experiences that Jacob seems to outgrow his fast-talking ways and heel-grabbing to become Israel, one who can hold his own with God and with other human beings. His Patriarchal status is not automatic, nor does it come at birth. Jacob is a heel-grabber, but Israel is a Patriarch: after much trial and error and growth, he attains the wisdom and foresight to lead the tribe.
As an example to us, this can be both instructive and hopeful. When we look into our lives, opening our eyes to both our strengths and our weaknesses, we have the chance to grow and improve. This is certainly the hope of God Who, we are assured, is interested in us and yearning for us to become better. As Ezekiel (18.23) reminds us: “This is Your glory: You are slow to anger, ready to forgive. It is not the death of sinners You seek, but that they should turn from their ways and live.” This is God’s perspective, watching the family progress or not, watching the tribe progress or not, watching each of us—year by year—progress or not.
And, year by year, God hopes that we will approach these holy days with the desire for introspection and improvement. Imagine being God and watching all the Jews stand before the Ark on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Though Abraham and Sarah probably had different ceremonies, the idea would have been the same: standing in the Divine Presence, beating their breasts with their ancient equivalent of עַל חֵטְא שֶׁחָטָֽאנוּ לְפָנֶֽיךָ / For the sin which we have committed against You and אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ, they would have looked inside and prayed for improvement. It has been many years, now, but God keeps watching us come forward prayerfully and think thoughts of תְּשׁוּבָה / repentance. From God’s perspective, it is a matter of loving and long-term attention.
When we say in our prayer, וְזוֹכֵר חַסְדֵי אָבוֹת וְאִמָּהוֹת, that God remembers the good deeds of our ancestors, it is a realistic memory: Sometimes Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, Leah, and Rachel were able to rise to the spiritual and moral occasion and live up to their godly potentials. Other times, they were fully human, which is a nice way of saying that they succumbed to selfishness, impatience, petty jealousy, gossip, etc. This is all our heritage—and our possibility.
The Sefat Emet, Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter, used to teach that each character and incident in the Scripture represents a possibility for us. We have the opportunity to be Pharaoh or Moses, Goliath or David, Jezebel or Miriam. The possibilities for heroism or villainy are ever-present, and the choices lie before us over and over again. Just because we chose to be a Pharaoh or Amalek or Delilah last time, we are not fated to make the same choice this time. This time, we could choose a better path—the path of a Nathan or a Joshua or a Deborah or a Sarah on those days where they achieved a kind of moral immortality.
When we think about the long line of Jews who have come before us—from the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of yore to the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of our own families and congregations, they represent our continuing relationship with the God of all the world. Within the jumbled possibilities of their humanity, they worked on themselves. Through the ups and downs of their very human lives, they found opportunities to respond to the Divine Presence with goodness and kindness and righteousness and holiness—and they are standing with us tonight as we contemplate these blessed possibilities for ourselves.