Yom Kippur Day-To learn to live to love”

Yom Kippur Day-To learn to live to love”

What is Judaism? How would you explain Judaism simply? Is it we believe that G-d is one – we promote that to the world?
Or we recognize there are hundreds of commandments that G-d gave us from the Torah, the Orthodox say six hundred thirteen, and to be a Jew is to observe those commandments?
Is it Maimonides thirteen principals of faith, articulating the fundamentals of Jewish belief?
Or if you simply say it in one sentence, as the great sage Hillel did two thousand years ago when someone asked him to explain Judaism on one foot – “Do not what is hatful to you, do not do to your neighbor, all the rest is commentary – go and study.”
Is it as the great prophet, Micah, in the bible tried to summarize, to say “what does G-d want from us, to do justice, to love mercy and to walk company with G-d.?”
Or what it says in Deuteronomy-what does God ask of you? To be in awe of God, observe the commandments, serve God and love God??” What is it to be a Jew?

In one way to look at it- If Yom Kippur atones for our transgressions against G-d, the most indispensable basis of it, then is to know what G-d wants us to do, so we know what we are responsible for. All these huge classic books of Judaism on my shelves, and I could point to all those and say “This is Judaism”, but I try and think about a succinct way to sum up the essential ideas. After reviewing and reflecting on all of these possibilities, I have three simple words that I want to communicate to you today as guideposts in what I think of the essentials of Judaism. And they all begin with L.
The first one is “To Learn”. The Hebrew word for learn begins with the same letter sound – Lamad, the basis of the word Talmud, to learn. In one of the classic formulas of Judaism, from the Talmud, it is taught, “the world is based on three things, Torah, Avodah, and Gmilut Hasidim”. The first word, Torah, means learning/ instruction. It is the root of that word is the same as a parent, to instruct, to teach. When the prophet, Micah said the key is to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humble with G-d, we are not walking humbly with G-d if we think we are know-it-alls, if we think we don’t need to learn from G-d what our lives should be.
Some born Jews sadly get virtually no Jewish education and go through life without really knowing the basis of Judaism. For those who do get Jewish education, some end at thirteen.
There are some bright spots on the horizon, the fantastic growth of Jewish Day schools. When I graduated from the fist Solomon Schechter 8th grade class with 13 classmates here in 1970, there were a few schools like it in the nation. Now there are many and many non-denominational ones as well, besides all the Orthodox. The proliferation of Jewish high schools, the ground breaking for the Chicago land Jewish high school is happening and of course, you have the Ida Crown Jewish Academy, and other high schools growing around the country, you have a proliferation of Jewish study classes at universities.
The access now to the internet has made learning just about anything jut a touch away. One of activities this past year has been uploading 175 videos of Jewish educational content to youtube, and they have been watched over 50,000 times, as one rabbi’s effort to assist Jewish learning. There is a great passage that we recite every morning in our prayer service, at the beginning of the morning Jewish prayers, which goes like this – These are deeds that yield immediate fruit and continue to yield fruit in time to come – honoring your parents, doing deeds of loving kindness, providing hospitality, visiting the sick, helping the needy bride, attending the dead, making peace between one person and another, but preserves for the last, a study of Torah is the most basic of them all. Read Torah.
A founder of human secular Judaism died in July sadly of an accident. In his obituary it said that when he founded secular human Judaism, in the prayer service they don’t recite the Shema, they say they revere the best in man. I obviously disagree with that. We do need to aspire to the best that human beings can achieve, but Judaism has always believed that there is a source of wisdom and power greater than us, and that source of wisdom and power we call G-d, Adonai, and that G-d communicates with us and has things to tell us. Whatever we study in Judaism, we are really trying to understand what it is that G-d wants. That doesn’t mean that we go to it blindly. Jews have always questioned. I have a whole sermon on the High Holidays about questioning. These are faculties we challenge, each other and even G-d.
When we say at the end of the Shema twice a day, the reader says “Adonai, elohachem, abet”, G-d is a
G-d of emet that is a source of truth. The word emet, if you think about it, has the first, middle and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet, we continually want to find the truth. There is obviously so much more available now. In 1456 there were sixty copies of the Guttenberg bible which was the first book printed in Europe. But yet, less than fifty years later by the turn of the century in 1500, there were fifteen million printed books in circulation. And it has just continued to explode, now the internet, where the people have multiple opportunities to learn.
One of the things I am so proud of about the Synagogue is the opportunities we have here. On a daily basis, you can get my Torah email, if you have a computer, with a sermon or Torah thoughts, or something every day. You can even do it while we are all sleeping, 24 hours a day. Besides my Youtube videos thousands more, and websites and newspapers, periodicals, books
We have weekly classes here. You want to learn how to read Hebrew; we offer it nearly year round. You want to learn the essentials of Judaism; we offer our sixteen week class nearly year round my mother offers a monthly Yiddish class. Gail offers her weekly spirituality Pirkei Avot class. We have a monthly lunch and learn with a variety of lectures. The Synagogue is a hotbed for Jewish learning, and of course, just not here. You are in one of the biggest Jewish communities the world, with a quarter million Jews, and all kinds of activities and learning opportunities here.
I don’t know if any of you have watched that show, “are you smarter than a fifth grader.” Well, in Judaism we should be smarter than a fifth grader. We should continue to learn every day. Why is Torah study considered to be the highest value above all others on that list of the ancient list from the Talmud? Because it leads to everything else.
There are a lot of stories of the summer about people diving for sunken treasure and finding huge treasures at the bottom of the ocean. The Torah says it is not across the ocean, it is not so far away you can’t find it, it is right there.
. The second “L” is to live Jewishly. I choose that because the Torah says “Here are the commandments, Hi Bahem, you should live by them. It does mean to live Jewishly, When G-d first offered the Torah, our ancestors said Naasah Vnishma, we will do it and then we will understand why we do it. Judaism is a leap of action. Of course we are a religion of faith, but primarily a religion of doing. In the famous expression, the world stands on three things, the first is Torah, which I just talked about is learning, the second is Avodah, which is work, but it is also divine worship, divine service, living with G-d, in G-d’s ways. There is a great passage, an ancient passage which says we have to imitate G-d and all G-d’s ways, walk in G-d’s ways. How do you do that? We don’t know what G-d does. While we know what G-d does through the commandments, when G-d sent a messenger to visit the sick, when the good deeds recorded as G-d’s doing, we have to emulate them. What does that mean?
We have to pray. We have a daily minion and most of the time, thank G-d, we’re not the biggest synagogue in the world, we have a daily minion, we have ten people. Make a commitment, come to our daily minion, and pray with us. Pray daily, even if you are not in our minion, but pray. The basic way Jews pray is through blessings. We should bless G-d a hundred times a day, our tradition said, through our daily prayers, whenever we benefit from something, to live Jewishly is to pray. Don’t be afraid to talk to God.
Judaism is also concerned about what we eat, not only healthily, which is a constant struggle, but also kosher, to discipline ourselves through Torah, to inspire to eating in a kosher way.
Judaism also tells us to live in terms of Jewish time. I don’t mean being late, - it means to sanctify the Sabbath, lighting candles, making kiddish and having Hallah.
I read a book this year called “How to think like Leonardo DiVinci, Seven Steps to Genius Everyday.” Step number three of the seven is about being attuned with all your senses to life. I’m thinking about how much of Judaism is attuning the senses to G-d. We light the candles, we feel the warmth and we see the light. Havdalah we smell the spice box. Shabbat we smell the Hallah and the chicken cooking, or whatever you are making. We hear the words of the Shofar and our prayers and Jewish songs. To live, to spend our time jewishly, sanctifying the Sabbath, coming to services, observing the holidays. We are not a religion that says “I’m Jewish so I eat a bagel and lox; it is a religion of sanctifying our lives for Jewish time.
And I’ll talk more about living jewishly means Jewish life cycle rituals. There is a disturbing trend I read about in the media of not only some Americans but young Jewish couples not circumcising their sons. We’ve done it for four thousand years. Ok, so you can’t walk for a year after you get circumcised (joke), but we have never not done it-even under threats. Huge medical studies indicate it is healthful in many ways.
Our adolescent life cycle event the Bar and bat Mitzvah. There are more Jewish kids this year who have applied to go on the birth right trip to Israel, somewhere about fifty thousand, but they cannot all be accommodated for lack of resources, but thank G-d that program exists, more, than are going to have bar/bat mitzvahs this year. I encounter parents who don’t bother with Jewish education and bar mitzvah- everything else is more important. In the sad aftermath of the bridge collapse in the twin Cities there was much bemoaning of the failure to invest properly in infrastructure of roads and bridges. The classic system of Jewish infrastructure, that has made Judaism possible, has been uniform, universal education of our youth.-and the bar/bat mitzvah ceremony which celebrates one stage of it. .
Jewish marriage and Jewish weddings-the classic angst thereof course is intermarriage, but the real issue is whether the family will be Jewish thereafter-we must do whatever we can to support the couple-in married or not, and encourage Jewish living after the ceremony.
Jewish funeral practices. Cremation seems to be an increasing mode of Jewish end of life, and as you know Judaism is opposed to that. We think people’s bodies should not be burnt. They should be lovingly placed back into the earth from whence they came, and we remember that Hitler major way of disposing of dead Jews was to burn them.
We think we should live our lives in Jewish life cycle ways.
And of course, live our lives based on the ethical pattern of Judaism In the hullabaloo about the various terrorist plots being uncovered in England, the papers say the average Londoner is watched and photographed three hundred times a day by these anonymous cameras. Well, we know G-d is watching us all the time. There is a wonderful Shabbat story that goes along with the Shabbat hymn Shalom Alachem, which talks about the welcoming the Shabbat angels-the story goes that there are angels looking in our window and they are checking to see if we are making Shabbat. Well, I want to borrow this story, that we are being photographed all this time and G-d’s watching us.
One of the ways to assess if we are living jewishly or not, is to imagine when the angels look through our windows, they wonder about more than Shabbat. Do they see us creating a Jewish home? Are there kiddish cups on display, is there a Hanukkah menorah, and are there Jewish books? Are these things dusty or are they being used? Is there a Hallah cover? Are there two sets of dishes for meat and milk? Is there music on that is Jewish?
Vanessa ocks teaches in the department of religious studies at the University of Virginia. She is the author of a book called “Words on fire, one woman’s journey into the sacred.” She identifies three useful categories as to what makes a Jewish home Jewish. The first category she calls “Jewish stuff”. Religious books, coffee table art, photographs of Jews, Jewish jewelry, seduccah boxes, Jewish art work, Jewish articulate objects. Does your home have this stuff? The second category she calls “Jewish Signifying Objects.” Objects that are not in of themselves considered exclusively and uniquely Jewish, but they function in many Jewish to embody, create an express Kiddush holiness, by their sheer presence. Traditional Jewish foods like Hanukkah latkes, homintashen, gefilte fish, displays of extended families, from generation to generation, do we have an abundance of Jewish signify objects? The third set in the Jewish home she calls “ordinary objects transformed.” Material objects found in any Jewish home, but function in a Jewish way. A dish is a dish, but in a Jewish home where Kashrut is observed, the dishes may have certain colors or patterns. A telephone is a telephone, but when it is used to check on a sick friend, it becomes a holy vessel. Even cleaning equipment when it is used to clean one’s house before Shabbat, to make Shabbat special, it becomes a holy vessel. And money, too, - is money being dropped into a tseddakah box before candle lighting?
These three categories of Jewish subjects signify objects of Jewish stuff that makes your home Jewish. What do the angels see? Is the home and immediate home defined by Jewish values? Is the conversation that occurs in your home gauged by a Jewish thermometer? Our tradition says that three people who eat and not share with the Torah, it is as if they consumed idolatrous sacrifices. Even one person sitting and thinking about Jewish subjects, brings the divine presence. Dr. Arnold Eisen, the newly appointed chancellor urged all Rabbis to speak about Jewish living and mitzvoth observance these High Holidays.

The third “L” after learning and living, is to love jewishly. There are two kinds of love. The first is to love G-d. The Torah commands us to love G-d three different ways, with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our might. Now how do you love G-d?
First of all, G-d has to be first. Anything else is idolatrous. And for many people, many Jews, G-d aren’t even on the agenda. But G-d has to be first. That means we need to pray, we need to thank G-d every day for the blessings in our life. One of the ways in which we love G-d is by doing G-d’s bidding, by extending ourselves to help others, to sanctify G-d through our deeds, called kiddushat hashem. You know the word enthusiastic means to be filled with G-d. So, we need to focus as a priority on loving
G-d. Lest you imagine this as unscientific, a recent article in the NYT about science and God said “Albert Einstein mentioned God often enough that one could imagine he and the “OLD ONE” as he called God sometimes, had a standing date for coffee. To wit-“the Lord is subtle, but malicious he is not.”
The other kind of love is to love others. And that starts with us. You know in a very pivotal central verse of the Torah, which is really the key to life, love thy neighbor as thyself, a lot of people talk about the challenge of loving your neighbor, but the key to the verse begins with loving yourself, and how many people don’t love them. But G-d loves you. You are made in the image of G-d, and we can’t ever forget that. And if we don’t love ourselves, how can we reach out and react to the world with any kind of image befitting being made in G-d’s image.
And after we understand we have to love ourselves, we have to reach out and love others. We have to see G-d in everyone else. There is no room in Judaism for any kind of racism, because we are all members of the human race. The Torah begins with one Adam. I don’t believe there is literally just one guy Adam at the beginning-(if so, who did his son marry?) But one Adam as a myth is a way of saying we all come from the same person, it is a classic madras saying, no one can say my father was greater than yours.
Key words of Judaism are chased and reclaim, as Micah said, to do justice and to love mercy. One of the names for G-d is Rickman lay, the merciful one. What does it mean to have mercy? One common expression is -Oh he is a dirty rat. But you know what; they have done studies this year that show that rats are very kind to each other, even to stranger rats. Chimps are the closest to humans of any animal but a study released in August showed that while chimps and humans can be properly vengeful to punish bad behavior, only humans are spiteful. We should just be as kind to other human beings, at least as nice as rats are and chimps are to their own. Dogs don’t fight each other unless there is a good reason-its only humans who amuse ourselves by starving man’s best friend into killing other of man’s best friends for sport.
The Torah says one law for Israelite and stranger alike. Love the stranger. It is a very unique and special religion in this regard to teach human beings not to have xenophobia, fear of strangers, but love of strangers. The basis of loving others is to treat all as we would like to treated-respect them, their property, and their honor.
NYT had story about hotels trying to improve wake-up calls. With all the fancy technology, often calls don't happen, or the wrong hour. We have always had a wake-up call using the most ancient and simple device-the shofar. Rambam-wake us up from our spiritual slumber. Our spiritual slumber is not really living fully as God intended.


And so my friends, what is it to be a Jew? What is Judaism? What are the pillars upon which we should live our lives? I offer this simple formula, to go forward this year and to think about this every day. To learn as a Jew, to live as a Jew, and to love as a Jew, G-d and our fellows. Every night before you go to bed, assess your day on that basis. Did I learn today? Did I live as a Jew today? Did I love G-d and my fellow creatures today? And, of course, every day we fall short, that is what it is to be human and so we repent and we reflect and we strive tomorrow. And every morning as we say the traditional words, which are beautiful to say, thank you G-d for restoring my soul. Modeh Ani Lifanecha Melach Chai Vikiyom. We also quote the great verses from the psalm – this is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Be filled with enthusiasm for the new day. By again say with me, to learn, to live and to love.