D'var Torah / Words of Wisdom (AE 09/17/2001)

Shalom. I am honored to be giving a D'var Torah on this, our first New Year celebration together. I am inspired by being in the company of like-minded people and by our all being part of the growing worldwide community of Humanistic Jews. I want to give you some thoughts that I hope will stay with you and give you pride in being here tonight and pride in choosing the path of Humanistic Judaism.

My Hebrew name is Avrum, or Abraham. Same name as the first Jew. (Actually, I was named for an ancestor who was a postman in the old country and I was called "Avrum from der poste" by some older relatives who are long gone).

I have asked myself whether having the same name as the father of the Jews is or is not an honor. Was Abraham a hero? That is a central question for us during Rosh Hashanah when the Akeda, which is the biblical story of Abraham's binding his son Isaac and nearly killing him, is told each year and examined each year. In these perilous and tragic times, the Akeda raises larger questions of whether or not it is ever justified to kill another person for your own belief. Once again, theism is responsible for horror and carnage beyond belief. Will innocent children and adults now have to die to avenge the loss of other innocent people? That issue will no doubt be with us for a long time to come. We could only wish that an Angel of the Lord had somehow caused those airplanes to veer away at the last moment, as the hand of Abraham was stayed at the last moment from killing Isaac. Such is the difference between reality and myth.

The story of the Akeda is a disturbing one which is inconsistent with our Secular Jewish philosophy. Abraham bound his son as a sacrifice in order to prove his devotion to God. Abraham was prepared to see his son die to show his love for a god who, one would think, already knew what was in Abraham's heart anyway. Abraham ignored compassion, the compassion a father should have for his son, the compassion that one human being should have for another. Many would say that the father of the Jews erred in his judgement. Yet traditional Jews use this story to show how deeply their God demands loyalty and the scriptures make Abraham a hero for his steadfastness.

"There is a Yiddish folk tale that asks why God did not send an angel to tell Abraham to sacrifice Isaac instead of doing so himself. The answer proposed is that God knew that no angel would have taken such a task. Instead, the angels would have said "If you want to command death, do it yourself." In other words, the angels would have exhibited civil disobedience and refused to be complicit in an immoral act.

For another, quite reasonable view of the Abraham/Isaac/God myth, the great biblical scholar Woody Allen wrote the following version of the Akeda which, although meant to be humorous, puts the humanist view quite succinctly:

[And Abraham awoke in the middle of the night and said to his only son, Isaac, "I have had a dream where the voice of the Lord sayeth that I must sacrifice my only son, so put your pants on." And Isaac trembled and said, "So what did you say? I mean when He brought this whole thing up?"

"What am I going to say?" Abraham said. "I'm standing there at two A.M. I'm in my underwear with the Creator of the Universe. Should I argue?"

"Well, did he say why he wants me sacrificed?" Isaac asked his father.

But Abraham said, "The faithful do not question. Now let's go because I have a heavy day tomorrow."

And Sarah who heard Abraham's plan grew vexed and said, "How doth thou know it was the Lord and not, say, thy friend who loveth practical jokes, for the Lord hateth practical jokes and whosoever shall pull one shall be delivered into the hands of his enemies whether they pay the delivery charge or not." And Abraham answered, "Because I know it was the Lord. It was a deep, resonant voice, well modulated, and nobody in the desert can get a rumble in it like that."

And Sarah said, "And thou art willing to carry out this senseless act?" But Abraham told her, "Frankly yes, for to question the Lord's word is one of the worst things a person can do, particularly with the economy in the state it's in."

And so he took Isaac to a certain place and prepared to sacrifice him but at the last minute the Lord stayed Abraham's hand and said, "How could thou doest such a thing?"

And Abraham said, "But thou said ---"

"Never mind what I said," the Lord spake. "Doth thou listen to every crazy idea that comes thy way?" And Abraham grew ashamed. "Er - not really … no."

"I jokingly suggest thou sacrifice Isaac and thou immediately runs out to do it."

And Abraham fell to his knees, "See, I never know when you're kidding."

And the Lord thundered, "No sense of humor. I can't believe it."

"But doth this not prove I love thee, that I was willing to donate mine only son on thy whim?"

And the Lord said, "It proves that some men will follow any order no matter how asinine as long as it comes from a resonant, well-modulated voice."

And with that, the Lord bid Abraham get some rest and check with him tomorrow.

(Woody Allen. Without Feathers Pp. 26-7)]

Whoever made up the story of Abraham and Isaac would have changed the course of Jewish ritual and perhaps history if they had made Abraham a heroic figure who stood up to the voice in his head he thought was the voice of God and refused to kill his son, perhaps offering his own life instead. That would have been an Abraham I could be proud of. As it is, Abraham is not a hero to me.

If not Abraham, which Jews should be our heroes? Jewish religionists argue that the age of miracles has past, that all we need to know rests in our history, that all the ideas necessary for human well-being have already been expounded, needing only commentary. So we have celebrated ancient heroes and heroines such as Esther, Moses, Solomon, and the Maccabees. Modern humans trying to emulate desert nomads or ancient sword-and-buckle warriors need more. Rabbi Wine has suggested, in Judaism Beyond God, that we identify also with our more contemporary secular heroes and heroines and make them part of the panoply of Jewish celebrations.

Though we think of it as a recent movement, Humanistic Judaism has a glorious past, with heroes and heroines enough to stir the dullest heart. There were those such as Spinoza, Martin Buber, Mordecai Kaplan, Louis Brandeis, and David Ben Gurion whose ideas laid the foundation for the movement to come. We can make heroes of the famous real Jewish Humanists who are known to have rejected theism and gone on to great accomplishment, such as Albert Einstein, Abraham Maslow, Sigmund Freud, Eric Frohmm, Edna Ferber, Sidney Hook and Hannah Arendt. There are contemporary leaders in the Humanistic Jewish movement such as Sherwin Wine and Isaiah Berlin to look up to.

And there are heroes and heroines sitting here tonight. Just look around! We are heroes and heroines because we start the New Year doing something to confirm our Jewish identity in a non-traditional way, and join with others who feel as we do.

We are heroic because, at this time and in this place, it is going against a very strong tide to reject traditional concepts of God. We would be in a minority anywhere in this nation since the vast majority of Americans claim to believe in God. Living where we do, being surrounded by fundamentalists, it is an act of courage to assert our disagreement with them. We take comfort in each other as aliens in this nation at a time of mourning when theistic prayers and sentiments abound.

We are heroic for being Humanistic Jews because we all appreciate that there are many Jews we know and respect who have the kind of faith we do not. There are many words of wisdom from fellow Humanistic Jews to support us in our inability to jump off the cliff of blind faith. From various authors:

"We hold to our traditions and we must do so, but we ought not to be bound, as are the religious, to ancient history. We believe, unlike religious Jews, that the Jewish experience has continued to expand." and

"Judaism, like a fine quilt passing through generations of hands, is an ever-changing tapestry. A static view of Judaism is a distortion. It is also the root cause of much unnecessary Jewish guilt." and

"What accounts for the profound appeal and power of the High Holidays for contemporary Jews? Surely the explanation is not to be found in the liturgy of the services, which is not significantly different from that of the other holidays or Sabbath services. Nor does the ostensible meaning and purpose of the High Holidays - divine evaluation and judgement on the one hand and repentance on the other - explain why Jews would seek divine approval on these two or three days but appear oblivious to its requirements and sanctions during the remaining 360-plus days of the year." We want to do better.

"In older days, our ancestors looked to God for the wisdom to guide the way to a new and better year. Today we look for that wisdom within ourselves … we call upon our own knowledge, our own morality, our own humanity. This is the time when we remember and judge the old year, the day when we plan and anticipate the new."

In closing, we can be proud of ourselves because we have done what humans must do to progress. We have observed, thought for ourselves and acted on our own conclusions. We have decided that being Jewish is important and being true to ourselves is important as well. Let us hope that in the coming year our lives will be enriched by being part of this worldwide movement to create a new Judaism free of unbelievable lore and practices, replacing them with a true concern for humanity in the here and now.

Let us put into practice that part of our celebrations when we say "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I?" The beauty and balance of those words might be the Humanistic Jewish cosmos in a nutshell. Every action, every decision we make, if it is to be an ethical one, needs to take into account what balance we're striking between self-actualization and self-transcendence. If I do not esteem myself, who will? Without self esteem we cannot survive and grow. As Jews, we acknowledge that we are part of humanity, part of the mass of Jews who ever lived and all those to come, yet each of us has the right to "… be for ourselves" as well as for others. The greatest joy comes from those acts that simultaneously enrich others as well as ourselves.

Presented by Allan Eckhaus on Sept. 17, 2001