Who are these prayers for?

October 21, 2019November 12, 2019 levtaylor

‘These prayers aren’t for me’ a woman said. She was addressing Judith Plaskow, the great feminist Jewish academic. Plaskow and her colleagues were on women’s study retreats in the 1980s. They were trying to wrestle with the Jewish tradition – a tradition they loved and simultaneously felt oppressed them as women. On these retreats, they discussed theology, read poems, studied Torah, engaged in rituals, meditated and wrote new prayers.

‘These prayers aren’t for me. These aren’t the prayers I grew up with,’ a woman told Professor Plaskow. ‘I don’t feel comfortable with them.’

‘We’re not the generation that gets to feel comfortable,’ Plaskow responded. ‘We’re the generation that gets to create a tradition so the next generation grows up in it, and for them it will be the authentic tradition, and they will feel comfortable.’

In my own life, this has turned out to be completely true. Siddur Lev Chadash was the prayer book of my childhood. It was first published in 1995. I remember standing together with Reading’s Jewish community, burying the old siddurim in the ground and celebrating the arrival of our new liturgy. Even at this young age, the event felt momentous. It felt simultaneously like everyone was grieving and celebrating. It was the end of an old cycle and the beginning of a new one.

The prayers of Siddur Lev Chadash were my prayers. I feel sucked in by their rhythm, transported by their ideas and comfortably at home when reciting them. But at the time when they were first introduced, they were scandalous. This prayer book, our prayer book, did something no prayer book anywhere else in the world had done before. It made God gender-neutral.

Nowhere in this siddur will you see God called “He”, “Him”, “Lord”, “King” or “Master”. At the time, this move was ridiculed. People saw it as the excesses of feminism. Even some congregations within Liberal Judaism opposed it as a drastic departure from the theology they were used to. They did not feel comfortable. But as Plaskow warned many years before, they were not the generation who would get to feel comfortable. Mine was.

And for me, the idea that God could be anything other than gender-neutral seems preposterous. How can an infinite being, who transcends space and time, be contained by something as small as a gender? I felt that I had the legitimate, authentic Jewish tradition. Words like “the Lord is my Shepherd” , to me, sounded decidedly Christian. On the other hand, “You are my Shepherd and my God,” the new translation of exactly the same psalm, was an unambiguously Jewish prayer.

The editors of that prayer book took a leap of faith. They created prayers that would make their own congregation uncomfortable so that my generation could have ones that would make us feel more comfortable. They gifted us a Judaism rooted in feminist thought, that taught us about God’s transcendent and unknowable nature. They ended old ways so that others could enjoy new ones.

In fact, this has been the way of Liberal Judaism since its inception. When it was first founded as the Jewish Religious Union, some of its members may have known the siddur of Reform Judaism’s West London Synagogue. Most, however, only knew Orthodoxy. They had little referent point beyond the lengthy Hebrew-language services that dominated London at the time.

They innovated in ways we could not dream of. They hacked up the services, re-ordered all the prayers, cut out every part they found offensive or uninspiring and produced a prayer book that reflected their values. From this, Rabbi Israel Mattuck, the movement’s first ever minister, created what would be the siddur for over forty years. It emphasised God’s universality, focusing not only on God’s special relationship with the Jews, but also on God’s relationship with all of humanity. This must have been outrageously audacious at the time. But if they had not had the courage to innovate, our Judaism would not exist.

In the 1960s, the Liberal prayer book, ‘Service of the Heart’ took a step that no other Jewish liturgy in English had taken before. It decided to focus on God’s personal and intimate character. It spoke about God in the vernacular, saying “You” instead of “Thou”. People were outraged that any liturgy had ditched the holy tongue of Elizabethan English. Today, it feels only natural that we should speak to God the way we speak in our daily lives. We may use grander language than we would in the supermarket, but the basic English grammar is the same. Those Liberal Jews took a decision to leave behind a language that felt comfortable so that we would have one that felt right to us.

Today, as we edit the movement’s new siddur, we are faced with the same challenge. We must ask ourselves not what prayers will make us feel most at ease, but how we want the next generation to feel at ease praying. We have to ask tough questions about what values we want to communicate and what learning of Liberal theology we hope to transmit.

Already, the editors, Rabbis Lea Muhlstein and Elli Tikvah Sarah, have begun that process. They have decided that not only should the English reflect our thinking, but that the Hebrew should reflect the English. Hebrew is a necessarily gendered language, so they have taken the bold step of feminising the Hebrew in some sections. They have diversified the names by which we call God. Not only will you see ‘Yud-Heh-Vav-Heh’ and ‘Elohim’, but you will also find ‘El Elyon’ – God on High; and ‘El Shaddai’, a biblical name for God derived from the word for breasts. You will see ‘Shechinah’, a word meaning ‘dwelling-place’, which in the Kabbalistic literature refers to the feminine aspect of God.

I have no doubt that this will be a difficult adjustment for all of us. It takes courage to leave behind something you know and begin something anew. But every year, at Simchat Torah, we do just that. Every year, we leave behind a year of Torah reading and begin again with the story of creation. We know that this year will be entirely different and we will read it in ways we never have done before. But we are able to let go of the old because we know that is what we must do to progress.

So, as this community moves from the familiar territory of Siddur Lev Chadash into the uncharted waters of Siddur Shirah Chadashah, I ask you to be brave. I ask you to imagine how these prayers will feel in thirty years’ time to somebody who has been raised on them. I ask you to allow yourselves to be uncomfortable. Embrace it. Even though these prayers are not for us, take the decision to make them yours.

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I gave this sermon on Saturday 19th October at Three Counties Liberal Judaism in Ledbury, Herefordshire.

high holy days · judaism · sermon · theology

Who will cut the heart in two?

October 10, 2019November 12, 2019 levtaylor

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”[1]

These are the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. If anybody understood human complexity, it was him. Solzhenitsyn wrote these words from inside a gulag – one of Stalin’s forced labour camps – in the second half of the 20^th Century. In this space, he experienced what any impassive arbiter would be forced to term evil: show trials, exile, slavery, massacres, and torture. His documentation of these events helped expose to the world the sheer cruelty taking place in the Soviet gulag system.

Yet, as we heard, Solzhenitsyn was adamant that evil was not something external to himself, nor exclusively the domain of Stalin’s henchmen, but something that could be found in the heart of every human being. How could he arrive at such a conclusion?

He knew the evil in the heart of humanity because he, too, was a war criminal. As a commander for a battery in the Red Army, Solzhenitsyn oversaw atrocities. He witnessed gang rape and murder of civilians. He saw his armies enter Germany not to liberate it but to seek revenge. He felt, yes, that the Nazis and the gulags and the western powers were guilty, but did not believe that he was any better.

Solzhenitsyn eventually found a reconciliation between the evil he had committed and that which was done to him in the form of religion. I do not know enough about the Russian Orthodox Christianity to which he converted to comment on how it might have helped him, but I can see outlines of such a theology in the Jewish tradition. I see it in the traditional Torah readings for Yom Kippur.

Ordinarily, Liberal Jews do not read the parashah concerning the slaughter of goats by the High Priest on Yom Kippur. Many of our founders felt that this text fetishised ritual over ethics, and gave too much weight to a practice that was defunct and that, in any case, we had no desire to reintroduce. In his final words, published in LJ Today, Rabbi David Goldberg, z”l, bemoaned that many of the younger Liberal rabbis were turning their backs on the radicalism that he had embraced. For him, that meant cutting out parts of the Scripture that were distasteful or outdated.

While I greatly admire the sincerity of Rabbi Goldberg’s convictions and his pioneering approach to our movement, reading a text is not the same as rehabilitating it. We can engage with a Torah text to see what wisdom it can offer to the present generation without imagining that we have to then institute the arcane rituals it describes. The text that will be read today by Reform, Masorti and Orthodox Jews need not be read as an instruction manual. Instead, let us treat it as an effort by our forebearers to psychologically grapple with the same issues that face us today.

Leviticus 16 is the description of the High Priest’s ritual on Yom Kippur. Here, Aaron is instructed to bring two male goats before God at the Tent of Meeting. He will take lots for the goats – one will be assigned for sacrifice to God; the other will be sent off into the wilderness for Azazel.[2] Having carried out atonement rituals for himself, Aaron will then lay his hands on the goat that has been assigned to Azazel. He will recite over this goat all the sins that had been committed by the Israelites in the previous year and send the goat, carrying all of these iniquities, off into the desert, where it shall be set free.[3]

It is only natural to wonder what these two goats are doing, why one has been assigned to Azazel, and who Azazel even is. Rabbinic tradition furnishes us with some explanations. In some traditions, Azazel is identified with a demon, parallel to God, who has no power over the Jews unless they have committed sins beyond redemption. Then, on Yom Kippur, Azazel will be able to take hold over us.[4] In another tractate, Azazel is identified with the fallen angels, Uzza and Azael, who caused humanity to sin by teaching them violence and brought on the Flood in Genesis.[5]

Whichever of these interpretations we adopt, Azazel is clearly a representative of some demonological tradition within Judaism. This figure represents utmost evil. It is either the cause of all violence in the world or an evil spirit, waiting to take control over us if we are not sufficiently well-behaved. The goat assigned to Azazel, then, is laden with all the parts of the Israelites they do not like, and sent off to be dealt with by this wilderness demon.

By contrast, the other goat, arbitrarily selected for God, acts as an expiation offering. In its sacrifice, the Israelite’s purity and devotion are symbolically offered. This ritual, then, is a demonstration of that need to split the human psyche. Everything in ourselves we do not like can be pushed out into the desert and sent away. Whatever we do like can be ceremoniously paraded in the centre of our communal space.

We have hopefully come a long way from our belief in demons and deities that desire animal blood, but how different are we from our ancient ancestors, who sought to divide the world into good and evil? Today, we do not impose all our fears on goats and hand them over to monsters. Instead, we perform that same psychological distancing with other human beings.

We project onto them the things we fear most in ourselves. They, our inversions, are stupid, ignorant and hateful. They, the opponents we imagine, are conceited, conniving and immoral. We turn anyone we do not know into a container for our fears. The term ‘scapegoat’ is derived from this parashah, and it is a perfectly apt description of how human beings can be transformed into symbolic representatives of all that is in us that we hate.

You may hear this and think, yes, they do that. The others, whoever we perceive them to be, surely think and act in this way. By imagining others in this way, we fall prey to exactly the trap I am describing. Yom Kippur does not call on us to examine the lives of others, but to engage in inspection of ourselves. Yom Kippur asks us, as individuals, how we will improve.

The challenge this parashah poses to us, then, is to consider who we scapegoat. Who is it that we imagine is out there, holding the views we find contemptible and acting in ways we find objectionable? What is it about them that we fear, and hate? And what is it within us, that in making these assumptions about others, we are seeking to ignore or erase?

Solzhenitsyn learnt from bitter experience that the line between good and evil does not run between different parts of humanity but cuts right through the human heart. We cannot do away with the parts of our heart that seek to hate and destroy. We can only examine them and ask ourselves what has really motivated these feelings.

As much as this teaching pushes us to acknowledge our own wrongdoing, it also teaches us that, within all of us, there is goodness. We cannot deny all that is noble and kind and just within us any more than we can deny our own wickedness. It is, in fact, the basis of all growth and change that we accept that there is much within us to love.

While Azazel helps us to think about the monsters inside us we would like to hide, our relationship with the other goat, that which is given over to God, prompts us to remember all that is good within us. Judaism teaches us that we are, whatever our imperfections, fundamentally lovable and worthy.

If we were not, we would never be able to improve. Few of us believe that we are wholly evil, but many of us turn our mistakes into character traits. How often have you heard somebody apologise for being late by saying that they always are? Or, for that matter, excuse themselves for letting you down by saying that they are a bad friend? When we define ourselves by the mistakes we make, we cut off our potential to make better choices.

The ritual of the two goats reminds us that we are not the stories we tell about ourselves. We are neither wholly bad, destined to be consumed by a demon in the wilderness; nor are we wholly good, perfect to be presented before God. We are all of our flaws and all of our successes. We are complete human beings, capable of trying and capable of failing; capable of improving and capable of succeeding.

As we fast and pray our way through Yom Kippur, let us work to embrace all of who we are. Let us seek to remember that the flaws we see in others may also be true of ourselves. Equally, may we not forget that even those we dislike contain the positive attributes to which we aspire. Let us remind ourselves that the flaws we see in ourselves are also balanced by the traits of which we are proud. Solzhenitsyn warned us not to split up the human heart. This Yom Kippur, may we unite it and help it to grow.

May you be sealed for good. Gmar chatimah tovah.

gulag

I gave this sermon for Yom Kippur morning at Lincoln Jewish Community.

[1] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

[2] Leviticus 16:7-10

[3] Leviticus 16:21-22

[4] Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer 46:9

[5] BT Yoma 67b

high holy days · judaism · liturgy · sermon · story · theology

The old man and the goat

October 7, 2019November 12, 2019 levtaylor

Back in the village, when myths were true, an old man used to come round with a goat. In the autumn, when the leaves were turning crispy and the days were getting shorter, he’d walk through the shtetl streets, dressed in rags and a flat cap.

Clopping along behind him came a goat on a rope leash. Although scruffy and somewhat unkempt, the goat was well-behaved. She didn’t eat the villagers’ laundry off their lines or stop and refuse to move, the way goats would normally do. She just casually pattered along behind the old man.

And as they walked along the winding, cobbled pavements, the old man would call out: “Sins! Sins! Bring your sins! Sin collection! Bring your sins!”

And they did. One by one, people came out of their houses, bringing their sins with them. A man with a cane came out, rested his hands on the goat’s head, and whispered in her ear: “I get angry too often. I need to stop losing my rag. I keep boiling over when I don’t mean to.” The goat nodded sagely, and the man hobbled back into his home.

A young girl leaned out of her wooden shuttered windows, rested her hands on the goat’s head, and whispered in her ear: “I make a mess and blame my sister. I tell my mum it was her. I know I shouldn’t lie. I don’t want to lie anymore.” The goat nodded sagely, and the little girl popped back through the windows and into her home.

The old man and the goat walked all through the streets of the village, as people patiently clamoured out from shops and houses to whisper their sins. As each person leaned down to place their hands on the goat’s head and confess their sins, the old man would hold the goat’s rope leash and stare off, wistfully, until they were finished. Then he’d move on and return to his call: “Sins! Sins! Bring your sins! Come see the goat and tell her your sins!”

They winded up and out through the town, into the farmland and countryside. As the houses grew further apart, the villagers came out in drips and drabs. A farmer walked out through the barley fields and stepped over the style to his pastures. He put his hands on the goat’s head and whispered in her ears: “I gossip. I ask other people’s business and I repeat it. I tell everyone private stuff. I know I need to find better ways to talk to people. I need to find better ways to talk about people.” The goat’s eyes glistened and the man returned to farming.

Off they went, the old man and the goat, up a winding road, leading up a mountain, to the castle that overlooked the village. Nobody ever talked about the old man or the goat or what they told them. Nobody gave too much thought to the castle or where the sins went. They just knew that, once the day was over, they felt as if they had been forgiven. Somehow this ritual alleviated their guilt and helped them to change.

Every year, at the same time, on this day, the old man and the goat came round and the people gave their sins. That was how they maintained peace in the village. It was their collective form of self-help.

One year, that changed. One little boy became a little too curious. As the old man came round, shouting “sins! Sins!” he wondered where all those sins went. He wondered why a goat had need of such sins, or whether such a method was really effective at getting rid of guilt. He decided to subtly follow the old man and the goat.

He crept along behind them, keeping his distance, all the way through the village and the farmland and the countryside; all the way up the winding mountain path to the castle, until the old man and the goat arrived at the enormous front door and walked in.

The little boy stood at a distance and watched through a window. Inside a giant hall was a beautiful queen sat on a towering throne. The queen accepted the old man and the goat into her presence. “What sins do you have for me?” she asked.

The goat opened her mouth and replied: “The baker has been holding back bread to drive up the price.”

The queen nodded. “And will he do it again?”

“No,” said the goat. “The baker wants to change.”

“Then this is forgiven,” said the queen. And a white cloud came out of the goat’s mouth and disappeared off into the air.

“Tell me another,” said the queen.

“A teenager in the town keeps staying out late and lying to her parents,” the goat proclaimed.

“And does she want to change?”

“Yes. She wants to be honest.”

“Then this is forgiven,” said the queen. And a white cloud came out of the goat’s mouth and disappeared off into the air.

So that’s where the sins go! The little boy was shocked. All this time it was not the goat that had removed the sins but the queen.

“Tell me another,” said the queen.

“The milkman deals unfairly in business. He dilutes the milk with water and gives people the wrong change. He overcharges to get more for himself.”

“And does he want to change?”

“Not really,” the goat shook her head. “He is weighing out unjust measures as we speak. He will send the same sins next year.”

“Then this will not be forgiven,” she said. A black cloud came out of the goat’s mouth, and floated back down towards the town. The little boy watched as it descended down the mountainside and into one of the farmhouses.

He had seen enough. He fled from the castle and ran back towards the town. He pelted towards home, but just as he was approaching the edge of the village, he heard wailing and sobbing. It was coming from the cow shed, where the black cloud had gone.

“He’s dead! He’s dead!” cried a woman from the farmhouse. She sobbed as she lugged out her brother’s body.

Suddenly the boy understood. What the queen did not forgive she avenged with death and punishment. The boy wanted no part in it. He ran into the village and told everyone what he saw.

“The goat decides if we live or die! The goat is judging us and telling all our secrets to the queen in the castle!”

The villagers were furious. They crowded around the town hall in their outrage. When the old man and the goat next came around, they chased them out of town. The man and the goat ran away into the wilderness and were never seen again.

Then, having calmed down, the villagers realised what they had done. Their whole system for penitence and improvement was gone. They turned to each other once more and asked what they should do.

The mayor held her head in her hands and told them there was only one option. They must go to the castle and visit the queen. She would tell them what to do.

Every single villager in the town huddled together and marched solemnly to the top of the hill where the castle was. They gathered at the drawbridge and walked into the throne room, where the queen was sitting.

She looked up as the entire town flooded into her hall.

“This is most unusual,” she told them, wryly.

The mayor stepped forward: “We’re very sorry, Your Majesty, only we don’t know what to do. We chased away the old man and the goat and now we have no way to process what we’ve done wrong. We have lost our path to repentance.”

The queen sighed. “Once, you used to send me your sins through an old man and a goat. Now, you will need to tell them to me in person. Come into my palace, all of you, and confess together.”

At that moment, every villager began frantically shouting out their sins. Every voice drowned out every other as they clamoured to be heard. From her throne, all that the queen could hear was a roaring, indiscriminate din. She patiently gazed out over the assembled hoard.

It did not take the villagers long to realise that their method was proving ineffective. To make sure they were understood over the din, some villagers began to gather together to confess to having committed similar trespasses.

“Ashamnu. We have done wrong. Bagadnu. We have betrayed. Gazalnu. We have robbed.”

Soon some of them had developed a chant to confess everything together: “Dibarnu dofi. We have told lies. Heevinu. We have been perverse. V’hirshanu. We have done wrong.”

Soon, all the hundreds of attendees had joined in and were chanting in unison: “Chamasnu. We have been violent. Tafalnu sheker. We have told lies. Yaatznu ra. We have given evil advice.”

The queen assured them: “When you had your goat, I knew who to judge and how. But now that nobody can tell me who is sincere and who is not, I will judge you together with mercy. If you come together in sincerity, I will accept your petitions. But if you stay home or ignore this new ritual, I will judge you all unfavourably together.”

And every year, the villagers came back and recited the same chants as the queen watched from her throne, going through the entire alphabet of their transgressions. They built up more elaborate rituals, abstaining from food, beating their chests, dressing in white, reciting their prayers from sundown to sundown. Together, they announced their iniquity and took responsibility for each other.

We are their descendants. We, the Jewish people, are the inheritors of the traditions of those people who once whispered to goats. There was a time when our community lived in a small place, and had a Temple, and intermediary priests performed strange rituals with goats to expiate our sins. Perhaps, if we believe the myths we will hear in the Yom Kippur parashah, we once lived in a time when God individually judged our sins and immediately exacted punishment and reward.

We are no longer those people. No longer do we sacrifice animals in a Temple. No longer do we require men to intercede on our behalf. No longer do we believe in immediate divine retribution. But we are their heirs. We have maintained their values. We still feel that, together, we can process our guilt through words and songs. We continue to believe that we can improve as individuals and as a collective. We still come together in the autumn, when the leaves turn crispy and the days grow short, to pray that we may be forgiven.

In the absence of miracles or curses, we, like our ancestors in the village, are called upon to take responsibility for ourselves and each other. We atone with our words and hold each other in this space, as we hope that we can find a path to repentance. Together, let us pray.

goat painting

I delivered this sermon for Kol Nidrei at Lincoln Synagogue on October 8th 2019

article · high holy days · judaism · sermon · social justice · torah

Living up to our ethical calling

October 3, 2019October 3, 2019 levtaylor

If a woman steals a loaf of bread to feed her starving family, has she really done anything wrong?

This moral question is familiar. We have heard it before. We hear the question and all of us intuitively answer “no.” Nobody would hold her guilty.

And I don’t dispute that gut reaction. When it comes to matters of morality, the answer our conscience automatically gives is usually the right one. But what does this answer tell us? What does it mean about ethics?

The question is, in fact, first asked and answered in the Book of Proverbs: “Nobody hates a thief who steals to satisfy hunger.” (6:30) It is the Bible itself, where we also read “thou shalt not steal” (Exodus 20:15) that tells us that, of course, we would not hold it against a starving person to steal.

Perhaps, we might conclude, there are limits to the Ten Commandments. Perhaps we should see the sixth dictum not to steal as a guideline rather than a rule. We might even conclude that there is no absolute morality, because there will always be exceptions and extenuating circumstances to mitigate against our moral judgements.

For me, that answer doesn’t feel right. It is not that no sin has been committed, but that a far greater one is hiding in the fact that the very question has been asked. What we should really ask is: how is it possible that this woman’s family is starving? Who has permitted poverty to even exist? That is the moral question facing us.

In these days of awe and religious introspection, most of us focus on our own conduct throughout the year. We wonder how much we have exhibited kindness and generosity since we last stood in synagogue and pledged to do better. But the sound of the shofar calls us to a far greater reckoning than just the state of our own souls. The High Holy Days call on us not only to take responsibility for our own actions, but for the state of our society.

The prophet Isaiah, whose haftarah we read on Yom Kippur, called us to exactly this accountability. He pours scorn on the Israelites’ prayers: “Behold, you fast for strife and contention, and to smite with the fist of wickedness.” (58:4) He tells them in no uncertain terms what is required of them: “Loose the fetters of wickedness. Break the yoke. Give bread to the hungry and homes to the poor.” (58:6-7)

The early Jewish reformers treated this text as the springboard for their theology. Scripture, they argued, was not primarily interested in the minutiae of ritual observances like kashrut and keeping shabbat. God’s direction to the Jews was to perfect the world through the pursuit of social justice.

That demand remains just as relevant today. Our prayers may be beautiful. Our services may be meaningful. We might read the Torah with feeling and precision. But all of that is utterly worthless if it doesn’t direct us towards an ethical life.

But Isaiah is also doing something far more radical. He is transforming morality from an individualistic concern with one person’s behaviour into a collective expectation of equity. Isaiah’s insistence on food for the hungry and houses for the homeless only makes sense if it is directed at society as a whole. Nobody in the peasant smallholder society of ancient Israel would have the power to do that on their own. Isaiah’s is a fundamentally political prophecy.

The moral task of the Jew, then, is not the relatively easy requirement that the comfortable should not steal, but an urgent calling to dismantle poverty entirely.

Never before in my lifetime has that felt so important in Britain. Today, there are well over 2,000 food banks in our country. Academics warn that they are becoming so institutionalised that we may well soon accept these symbols of poverty as normal. They were created to fill the gap left by savage cuts to the welfare to which people were once entitled. Some experts warn that they may soon replace benefits altogether.

When critics call our state today Dickensian, they are not exaggerating. The diseases of poverty-stricken Victorian England are back on the rise. Tuberculosis, scarlet fever and malnutrition are making a very unwelcome comeback. None of us can deny having noticed more rough sleeping, cramped housing or slum-like living conditions.

We cannot blame this increase in poverty on personal failings when there are such clear structural causes. Joblessness and housing shortages; austerity and recession; political policies. These are the causes of inequality in Britain, the world’s fifth richest nation. Individual action alone will never come close to remedying these ills.

Poverty in Britain today is both a political choice and a moral disgrace. As we pray in these days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we must pay attention not only to our own conduct but to our whole country’s. We must be prepared to live up to the true ethical calling advanced by our tradition. The responsibility rests on us to make sure that poverty is completely eliminated forever.

Nobody should ever have to steal to feed a starving family. Nobody should ever have a starving family.

I wrote this sermon for Liberal Judaism’s Days of Awe series