God, Torah, Israel, Part III:  The People Israel
Sermon, Erev Yom Kippur 5765
Rabbi Bruce Kadden

What does it mean to be a Jew?  What does it mean to be a member of the people of Israel?  These are difficult questions, but also crucial questions.  And they are questions I want to explore with you this evening as I continue my series of sermons on God, Torah, and Israel.

Like many Hebrew words, Israel has a number of meanings.  Israel is, of course, the homeland of the Jewish people.  Tomorrow morning I will speak about the land of Israel and the state of Israel.

Israel is also used to refer to the Jewish people, as in the phrases b’nai Yisrael, literally the children of Israel, and am Yisrael, the people of Israel.  This evening, I want to discuss what it means to a member of this people we call Israel.  At its core, what does it mean to be a Jew?

Our search for the answer to these questions begins with the first time the word Yisrael appears in the Torah.  It does not refer to the people, but rather to a person.  It is the new name given to our ancestor Jacob following a mysterious encounter on the banks of the Jabbok River. 

Jacob, you will recall, was the younger twin brother of Esau.  Jacob never missed an opportunity to supplant his brother, first demanding his birthright in exchange for some food, and later, with the help of their mother Rebecca, conspiring to trick their father Isaac into giving him the blessing reserved for the first-born.

When Rebecca discovered that Esau wanted to kill Jacob, she encouraged her favorite son to flee to Haran and stay with her brother Laban and his family.  So Jacob goes off to Haran, where he falls in love with Laban’s daughter, Rebecca, but is tricked into marrying her older sister Leah.  After committing to work another seven years, he also receives Rebecca as a wife. 

Eventually, Jacob overstays his welcome, and sets out to return home with his wives, concubines and their children.  Before going home, however, he must try to reconcile with his brother Esau.  Jacob is hopeful that in 20 years Esau has mellowed, and sends messengers ahead to gain his brother’s favor.  But the messengers report that Esau is approaching Jacob with 400 men.

Now greatly afraid, Jacob prepares for the worst, dividing his camp into two, praying for God’s deliverance, sending a generous gift of goats and sheep, camels, cows, bulls and asses to Esau, and bringing his family to safety. 

Jacob was alone, but is suddenly confronted by a “man,” who wrestles with him, wrenching his hip socket, when he realizes that he cannot defeat him.  Jacob demands that this being (which now appears to be more than an ordinary man) bless him before letting him go.  “What is your name?” he asks.  “Jacob,” he replies.  “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with beings divine and human and have prevailed.”  Jacob receives a new name, symbolizing a new identity.

According to this story, Israel means one who strives with God, or in the term coined by Arthur Waskow, “Godwrestler.”  To be a member of the people of Israel, to be a Jew, then means to be a Godwrestler.  It means to commit oneself to struggling with the Divine, to try to understand God and what God demands of us. 

Elie Wiesel has said that a Jew can be a Jew with God or against God, but not without God.  Doubts and struggles, questions and challenges are all a part of what it means to be a Jew. 

Waskow writes, “Generations of Jews after Jacob have wrestled with other people and with God, and the sweat from their wrestlings too became the fiery shapes on the parchment and the paper.  And it is from the very pores of our own wrestle with other human beings, in the full knowledge that every such wrestle is with God as well, that we must distill our ‘theology,’ our own ways of understanding God and Torah.”

To be a Jew, then, means to engage in serious struggles with one another, to challenge and to argue over the words of Torah and what they mean in our lives. 

We Jews are very good at arguing.  There is a story about a new rabbi who comes to congregation.  Every week on Shabbat, an argument breaks out when it comes to saying the Sh’ma.  Half of the congregation stays seated and the other half of the congregation stands.  Those who stand say, “we have to stand for the Sh’ma; it is our most important proclamation.  Throughout history, Jews have died with its words on their lips.”

But the others argue that the Shulchan Aruch teaches that if one is seated when you come to the Sh’ma you remain seated.  So each week those who are seated yell at those who are standing, and those who are standing yell at those who are seated.

The rabbi remembers learning that there is a 98-year old man, a founding member of the congregation who is in a nearby home for the aged, so he takes one representative from each camp and goes to the home.

            “Wasn’t it the tradition in our congregation to stand for the Sh’ma?” they ask him.

            “No, that wasn’t the tradition,” he replies.

            “Then it was the tradition in the congregation to sit for the Sh’ma?” they ask.

            “No, that wasn’t the tradition, either,” he answers.

            And the representatives of each group begin arguing back and forth.

            “You see,” said the rabbi, “this is what happens at all services, everyone argues with each other.”

            “That is the tradition,” the old man says.

            Rabbi Joseph Telushkin has suggested that our penchant for arguing is due, at least in part, to our abhorrence of physical violence.  Instead, we discharge our anger verbally.  We argue and struggle with each other and argue and struggle with God.  That is first and foremost what it means to be a member of the people of Israel.  Our very name implies that we are a people who wrestles with God and each other.

            Second, to be a member of the people Israel means to embrace the covenant which God made first with Abraham and his descendents and then with the entire people at Mount Sinai.  Our Torah reading tomorrow morning reminds us of this covenant.  “Atem nitzavim hayom kulchem lifnei Adonai, Eloheichem/You are standing, today, all of you, before Adonai your God…to enter the covenant that God makes with you this day” (Deuteronomy 29:9-11).  What does it mean to be part of this covenant with God?

To be a part of the covenant means that we have a common history and a common destiny.  Tomorrow morning’s Torah reading says that God made the covenant “both with those who are standing with us this day...and with those who are not with us here this day” (29:14).  In other words, it was not only our ancestors who stood at Mount Sinai and accepted the covenant God made with the people, but it was all of us.  I was there and you were there. 

In the 12^th century, a convert to Judaism asked Maimonides whether he could recite the words, “our God and God of our ancestors” and “you have brought us out of the land of Egypt.”  Maimonides replied, “Yes, you may say all of this in the prescribed order and not change it in the least….Do not consider your origin inferior.  While we are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you derive from the Creator of the world.”

Whether a Jew-by-birth or a Jew-by-choice, all of us were at Sinai.

But it was not just Sinai where we stood with our ancestors, but at other times and places that have shaped the Jewish experience.  This idea is best expressed by a powerful essay by Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, entitled “Remembering:  I stood with Abraham.”   

It reads in part:

            “I stood with Abraham in his lonely vigil
            and read the destiny of my people in the stars.
            “I was with Isaac when he built the altar
            where his faith and devotion were put to the test.
            “I stood with Jacob when he wrestled through the night
            with the angel of despair and won a blessing at the break of dawn….
            “I was at Sinai and entered there the everlasting covenant
            between my people and its God.
            “I was with Joshua at Jericho
            and with Deborah by the waters of Megiddo….
            “I was with the prophets who came to destroy old worlds
            and to build new ones….
            “I wandered with my people into many lands,
            where the cross and the crescent reigned.
            I walked with them over all the highways of the world.
            “I was with them when they drank out of the bitter chalices
            of pain humiliation, cruelty, and hatred.
            “I was with them when they landed at Ellis Island,
            and fell in love with the land that stood for liberty.
            “Then I saw the night descend again.
            I saw them suffer as no people has ever suffered before.
            I saw them burned and gassed and tortured.
            “Then, like a Phoenix, I saw them rise again in the old land.
            I saw them begin a new life there,
            Based on the ancient teachings of justice and mercy.
            “I saw them nurture saplings in the wilderness,
            and I watched them make the desert bloom.”

This essay concludes, “They are bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, soul of my soul.  They are my people.  Their quest is mine.  They will live within me, and I will live with them, forever.”

Embracing the covenant between God and the Jewish people means affirming its history is our history, that we were present for the unfolding of that history, and that the triumphs and tragedies, the hope and despair are part of who we are.

But embracing the covenant is not just looking to the past; it is looking to the future as well.  For it means that we not only affirm a common history, but a common destiny.  Whatever lies ahead, we will experience together; whatever the future may hold, we will share that fate.

The Talmud declares:  “Kol Yisrael aravim zeh bazeh/all Israel is responsible one for another.”   What happens to another Jew affects me.  What happens to Jews half way around the world affects us here in Tacoma, Washington. 

In July of 1990, our family left for a year-long Sabbatical at Kibbutz Yahel in southern Israel.  Little did we know that a month later Iraq would invade Kuwait and that by the end of the year the United States and a coalition of countries would be preparing to go to war with Iraq. 

We, of course, had to consider whether we were going to stay, or return to Salinas.  Our “discussion” of this crucial decision was really not much of a discussion.  One of us said, “We aren’t going to go home, are we?”  And the other one responded, “No,” and that was that.  We had chosen to spend the year with our people in Israel, and we weren’t going to let anything stop us.  The kibbutz members were pleased and, I think, somewhat surprised by our decision.  After all, most Americans and even some Israelis were leaving in droves. 

But we knew that we could not abandon Israel in her time of need.  Just as a husband and a wife should be committed to one another in good times and in bad times, we must be committed to our people when things are going well and when things are not going well.

We cannot turn our back on our brothers and sisters in Israel, or anywhere else.  When Jews are being persecuted, we must come to their aid.  The successful effort to free the Jews of the Soviet Union was one of the great triumphs of Judaism in the 20^th century.  The American Jewish community demonstrated its commitment to helping Jews in distress by developing a campaign comparing Soviet leaders to Pharaoh and using the biblical slogan “Let my people go!” 

Now, Jews were not the only religious group persecuted in the Soviet Union.  But Jews in the United States and elsewhere were the only ones to stand up for their brothers and sisters and assure that the world was aware of their situation. 

Similarly, the last decades of the 20^th century saw the rescue of tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews who were brought to Israel in dramatic airlifts.  One commentator observed that it was the first time that blacks had been brought from one place to another for freedom, rather than to be slaves. 

We must continue to affirm our support for Jews the world over who suffer persecution.  For their destiny is our destiny and their future is our future.  If we withhold our support, if we try to distance ourselves from their predicament, it will only be a matter of time before we will face the same situation.  To be part of the people of Israel means to affirm our common history and our common destiny.

Finally, to be a member of the Jewish people means to affirm God’s call to us to be a holy people.  Tomorrow afternoon, we shall read from Leviticus 19, which says:  “You shall be holy, because I, Adonai your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2).  What does it mean to be holy?  The Hebrew root koof-dalet-shin means to be unique or set apart.  The Jewish people is to be unique, set apart, different from other peoples.  That is what it means to be the chosen people.  We were not chosen receive privileges, but rather we were chosen to fulfill responsibilities that our contained in the Torah.

Those called up to the Torah praise God “who chose us from all peoples and gave us the Torah.”  Those concepts are inextricably interlinked.  According to one source, God first tried to bring the teachings of the Torah to everyone.  But when that plan failed, God decided to take a different approach.  God chose one people who would bring God’s message to all the world. 

We are to be a “light unto the nations,” attesting to God not by word, as much as by our behavior.  What we do as Jews not only reflects on what people think of us, but on what people think of our God. 

Jews have not always been comfortable with the idea of being a chosen people, of having a unique destiny, of affirming our differences from others.  Some Jews have tried to deny those differences and have refused to accept that they are different from other human beings.

But Judaism has survived for 4000 years precisely because in each generation we Jews have embraced our unique heritage and affirmed that we are different. We have stood up for who we were and what we believed, even when it cost us our lives.  Being different is not easy.  Being Jewish is not easy.  But the struggles and challenges that we have faced as a people have made us who we are today, and has prepared us well for the challenges we face in the 21^st century.

To be an am kadosh, a holy people, means to observe Shabbat and Jewish holidays even when the rest of the world is going about its daily business.  It means to embrace Jewish customs and traditions even if you are the only one doing it.  It means following Jewish values and teachings even when they conflict with American values and practices.  It means recognizing that it is all right to be different and that we should always be proud of who we are.

On this most sacred evening, let us affirm what it means to be a Jew, a member of the community of Israel:

--to be a Jew means to follow the example of our ancestor Jacob who wrestled with beings Divine and human, and was rewarded with name Israel, one who wrestles with God;

--to be a Jew means to be a part of the covenant that God made with our ancestors, to recognize that we were at Sinai when God made that covenant and to affirm our common history and common destiny.

--and to be a Jew means to respond to God’s call to be holy, recognizing that we are part of a unique people.

May each of us affirm our place as a member of the people of Israel and be strengthened to live up to these ideals in the coming year.

[back to list of sermons]

[back to top]