3002 Saturday Morning Worship
"The Jew in the Chalice"
A Sermon by the Rev. Liz Lerner
What a pleasure, what an honor, to be here this morning, to see
this multitude of Unitarian Universalists. Precious people, your
commitment to this saving faith, to our message of respect and openness
and responsibility and engagement… each year events make this
message more crucial… and you are its messengers. As Unitarian
Universalists I honor you for the persistent courage and fearsome
vulnerability required to be a person of free faith in this world.
Thank you for covening this year, again, to carry our faith forward,
and for being here this morning.
Everyone has a story. My words this morning are partly about my
story, but I share them believing that they're also about your story,
because we are all on a journey and we have all experienced that
every journey, every pilgrimage, howsoever chosen, however much
embraced, is also a hardship. Every search yields some answer, but
not always the answer we sought. We are all seekers who have faced
difficult questions and intimidating answers, who have precious
stories and wisdom to share.
Some of us were raised Unitarian Universalist. More of us came
to it from some other faith, and my theme today is particularly
about those whose UU identity is part of a larger, interfaith or
multicultural experience. We talk and know a lot about the range
of theologies people represent in our congregations: from atheist
to theist, from Buddhist to Sufi, from existentialist to Christian.
But what I'm talking about is not so much where we've come as where
we came from. Because we have a choice we all make in Unitarian
Universalism: will we weave in our diverse religious histories and
backgrounds to enrich and deepen the tapestry that is Unitarian
Universalism, or will we merely wave them as we would a flag, only
to draw attention or make a point? Those metaphors kinda give away
my bias, don't they? But I believe it; our diverse religious and
cultural backgrounds and heritages bring nothing to this faith if
we, newcomers and longtimers alike, fail to do the real spiritual
work to make our diversity coherent within the larger framework
of our UU movement.
It is easy to sing about something that 'sounds along the ages,'
harder to define what that is. Our hymn doesn't do it; how many
of us have read that hymn wondering, as Jane Rzepka pointed out
a couple of years ago, what is it that sounds along the ages? Too
often we content ourselves with a comforting, vague universality
when we could be better served by attention to the beauty of the
particular, which gives religion much of its power. We need to get
better at doing this, so that we offer our people opportunities
not just for acceptance but for integration, not just to change
but to grow.
Well, that's very abstract; what am I really talking about? A few
years ago, a good friend of mine, the Jewish son of a holocaust
survivor, was best man at his Jewish friend's wedding. The friend
was marrying a Catholic girl. They searched long and hard for a
rabbi who was willing to perform the wedding. Though the wedding
was in Texas, the only rabbi they could find to perform their interfaith
wedding was located in New York and charged a high fee. They paid
his fee, and also for his roundtrip flight and his accommodation
in Texas. My friend Dan and his friend went personally to pick up
the rabbi at the airport and bring him to the hotel. In the car
on the way to the hotel, the rabbi was talking to the groom about
his imminent marriage and his conversation was far from congratulatory.
In fact, what the rabbi said to the groom was: "You are completing
Hitler's work."
Since the groom and his wife told me that story, I've heard similar
tales. Some Jews say this to others who are leaving Judaism, or
marrying outside the faith. There's a lot one could say about this,
not least about the hypocritical clergyman who pronounces such curses
even as he accepts exorbitant fees to perform the very service he
condemns. But I actually want to explore that charge, so-called
'completing Hitler's work', because among other things, it's an
accusation also sometimes leveled at Jews who come to us, to Unitarian
Universalism.
The accusation builds on a piece of post-holocaust theology proposed
by a Jewish philosopher and theologian named Emil Fackenheim. In
the wake of the holocaust and the inevitable crisis of faith it
posed for many surviving Jews, he proposed a kind of behavioral
modification theology. Fackenheim said the ultimate theological
imperative, after Hitler, wasn't to question the nature or validity
of Judaism or the Jewish relationship to God; no, it was much more
worldly. There are 613 historic lesser commandments in Judaism,
having to do with how to be observant. Fackenheim declared that
the holocaust engendered a new, 614th commandment: "Thou shalt
not give Hitler a posthumous victory." In order to finally
and lastingly defeat Hitler's aim, Jews needed to remain true to
their heritage.
We are so used to the joyous stories of people who walk through
our doors and feel they have come home — who only wish they'd
found us 10 or 20 or 40 years ago. This can make it hard to realize
that finding a home among us is not always that simple. For some
it involves estrangement from family or friends or even their culture
of birth, because they come from a background that is so different
from the ways of Unitarian Universalism. We don't expect that it
will be that hard, that painful, for folks — we don't always
leave room for people to tell us when it is, and we certainly don't
do much in our faith to honor that struggle, or offer much in the
way of tools for people to use in reconciling their past personal
and religious heritage with their UU faith and living. The more
I have begun to talk about this in my work, the more people have
come forward to me: in my own church, over email or the phone —
to share their struggles. They love this UU faith — but that
doesn't make it easy to deal with their Jewish or fundamentalist
Christian or Greek Orthodox family and friends and past and present.
When I mention this conflict, I'm really not just talking about
Jewish UU's here. I know there are many among us with families strongly
associated with other faiths: Southern Baptist, Pentacostal, Catholic
— for whom this is a perennial and wrenching issue. Every family
gathering can become about defending one's faith against the other.
Carefully orchestrated conversations in cars and around barbeques
and after attending the home congregation one weekend raise issues
of coming back to the fold, and sometimes also the consequences
of refusing. Pressure, derision, condemnation, rejection, estrangement...
sometimes nothing is too much when the issues are as bottom line
as a loved one's faith and righteousness and eternal damnation.
I'm addressing the Jewish angle because though I was raised UU,
I'm also half-Jewish. My mother's family is Polish and Italian Catholic,
but through my father, I am Ashkenazic, which means that I am of
the Eastern European branch of Jews, as opposed to the Sephardic
Jews who hail from places like Spain and Morocco. My father grew
up Orthodox Jewish in Dorchester, Mass. My father's family came
from Russia. Some of my great grandparents and grandparents took
all their possessions, sold them, left their shtetl near Kiev, bribed
the border guards, got on a boat, and came to America. For anyone
who's seen "Fiddler on the Roof," the last scene of the
village is a good illustration.
I grew up with some sense of being Jewish, for a few reasons. One
was that after the ancient destruction of the holy temple in Jerusalem,
Judaism became a faith celebrated in the home. The home matters
as much as the synagogue in terms of Jewish practice. Much as my
mother loves the pagan greenery of Christmas and decorations and
gifts, she really worked just as hard on Jewish holidays. We had
hamentaschen at Purim, and celebrated the Jewish New Year with challah
and honey, and cooked and cleaned and learned and sang for every
holiday. I learned the basic blessings in Hebrew and could translate
them word for word into English. Baruch atah adonai, eloheinu melech
ha-olam, asher kid shanu bm'mitzvotav vitizi vanu l'chad lich ner,
shel Pesach. "Blessed art thou, sovereign creator of the universe,
who commands us regarding the celebration of Pesach." Passover
was the biggest deal with a gathering of relatives, a seder meal
and what then seemed like interminable recitation of Hebrew.
My Jewish heritage is that I am descended from about 16 direct
generations of rebbes going back to Yisrael Rudnick, the Kuchurov
Rebbe, whose nickname was Sroleck the Reb. Kuchurov was somewhere
in what is now the Ukraine. That great, great uncle Yisrael was
crucified by Christian Russians during the Russian revolution during
a pogrom to break up the shtetl. It was his murder that motivated
my relatives to sell everything and leave for America. That connects
to the last factor sealing my sense of Jewish identity; learning
about the Holocaust, learning that while Jewish law considered that
I wasn't officially Jewish, Hitler's dictates would easily have
placed me on the trains, in the labor and death camps, behind the
fences, with the other Jews. There is an enduring sense of profound
vulnerability that came to me with that knowledge. Those of my Russian
relatives that survived pogroms and attacks during the Russian Revolution
and Civil War were dead by the end of the Second World War, killed
in mass executions of Russian Jewish shtetls and buried in unmarked
crowded graves. The sense of vulnerability has never left me and
I believe I share this sense with almost all Jews everywhere since
the Holocaust.
My parents chose to raise my sister and me Unitarian Universalist.
The general worldliness, liberalism and what some would call 'agnosticism'
of this faith matched their own, and also the openness and pluralism
of Unitarian Universalism seemed uniquely suited to our family's
interfaith religious identity. Because Unitarian-Universalism is
so religiously multifaceted, growing up in a bi-religious household
never felt like a conflict — the same holidays and discussions
that happened in our home happened also at church.
Growing up half Jewish and UU offers a lot of opportunities and
challenges for exploring the relationship between Judaism and Unitarian
Universalism. And there is a relationship; like all relationships,
it has many facets. It is traditional; we honor our Judeo-Christian
heritage and Jewish and Christian teaching which call us to respond
to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves. It is historic;
around the turn of the last century there was a hot intellectual
debate in Boston between Unitarians and Jews regarding a surprising
question: were the two faiths the same? We can perhaps see aspects
of the issue if we consider Unitarian Francis David's words: "We
must accept God's truth in this lifetime. Salvation must be accomplished
here on earth. God is indivisible. God is one." and the central
statement of Jewish faith (which is also so focused on how we live
in this world, this lifetime), the Sh'ma: "Hear O Israel, the
Lord our God, the Lord is One." And the relationship is contemporary
because we Unitarian Universalists do have so many people in interfaith
marriages or families, or who come out of Judaism to find a faith
home with us.
As I learned in my graduate studies of Judaism, which I did as
part of my preparation for UU ministry, there is a lot of beauty,
wisdom, power and even humor in Judaism, even in the Hebrew Bible.
Who knew that in Numbers 11, during their forty years in the wilderness
the chosen people had had it and cried out in their anguish: "Enough
with the manna — we want garlic!" in the Bible.
Judaism is filled with morality and visions of justice and living
and spirituality that are moving and profound; Ecclesiastes, the
23rd Psalm. The Hebrew Bible mandates that not only Jews should
rest on Shabbat (Sabbath) but also their servants, Jewish or not,
and not only the servants but also the farm animals should not be
made to work on Shabbat, and not only the animals but also the land.
Once every seven days, and for an entire year once every seven years
comes the sabbatical year when you do not work the land.
Nothing is perfect — there are also dark and disappointing
stories and interpretations of the divine that are petty and chauvanistic
and provisions for slavery and treatment of slaves in the Bible,
and more, but there is also much to admire and even strive for.
The famed good Samaritan of the Christian parable was acting in
accord with the Jewish law in Torah which Samaritans follow to this
day.
My heritage and studies made Judaism live for me, and make me
want to honor it and incorporate it into my life. But being a UU
Jew, or a Jew-U, is hard in many ways. The sensitivity of we UU's
to inclusive language, gender equality, justice, and moving beyond
patriarchal or parochial traditions does make some aspects of modern
Judaism very hard for me at times. There is the sexism: the traditional
daily blessing wherein Jewish men thank god for not making them
a woman, the small and largely unhonored role of women in the Bible.
We learn of the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but there is no
mention of the long-suffering and venerable Sarah, Rachel, and Leah.
Likewise, yarmulkes (skull caps) are traditionally for men to wear,
as are tallises (prayer shawls).
There is also the exclusivity of the Jewish self-conception as chosen
people with a sense of uniquely close relationship to God and the
divine, as a bride to a groom, possessing a special, ultimate truth.
(Of course this religious dynamic is not limited to Judaism, but
Judaism is the religion I am personally concerned with, so...).
This is the justification for the Jews' biblical invasion of Middle
East's fertile crescent and killing or exiling native peoples. This
has changed some more recently; in fact some modern Jewish theology
no longer holds that only Jews are saved, rather that Jews are chosen
by their observance to redeem all the peoples of the earth —
this is even an explanation for the strangely consistent suffering
of Jews throughout history and the world for the last 3-4,000 years.
But participants in Passover and other holidays know that this exclusivity
and sense of chosenness or superiority are still celebrated and
lifted up throughout the liturgical year. We see it even in the
debates around domestic policy in Israel with the Israeli and Palestinian
people.
What makes my difficulties with such traditional elements of Judaism
especially difficult is that tradition, and adherence to tradition,
is all that has kept the Jews and Jewish culture intact over all
the centuries. It is hard to know how to respect tradition without
ending up stuck with ideas, beliefs, and behavior that is no longer
possible or acceptable to me.
I used to say that I wondered what my rebbe ancestors would think
of me. Would they be glad that I am rekindling my Jewish heritage?
Would they think it shameful that a woman is working as a scholar
and religious leader? Would they feel that my loyalty to Unitarian
Universalism and its messages, nebulous as they sometimes are, is
selling out the very heritage so many Jews have suffered and even
died for? Would they be glad for me, proud of me, or shocked at
me, to hear me recite a b'racha, a blessing at the Passover seder,
and then see me in a church building on Sunday in my robes and stole
which has on it a Jewish star and also crosses, symbols of Greek
paganism and of nature, a depiction of a deity and a goddess no
less?
A Jewish professor of mine blessed me with the answer, which I
think I had already known in my heart: they would be repelled and
appalled. People don't always like to hear me say that — I
didn't like it when he said it. But I think it's true, and I've
made my peace with it. I was raised UU and I was raised Jewish.
I cannot be other than I am. Moreover, I see such power and beauty
in the intersection of these faiths, in opportunities for us to
draw on those millennia of Jewish spiritual expression, of theological
reflection, of concern for justice and for right living in this
world.
There are no guidelines about how to make my life as a Jew and
a Unitarian Universalist meaningful and right. But I know that it
seems spiritually right to be engaged in this work of exploration
and reconciliation. Unitarian Universalism tells us to heed and
honor our conscience, that it is not only an ethical voice but a
spiritual instrument. We all need to heed the depth of our roots
and the height of our visions. As James Luther Adams, our UU theologian,
declared; revelation is ongoing, continuous. Remembering this is
essential if we are to grow to become our deepest and best selves.
For my own journey, I can say the path is rarely clear, especially
when approaching what matters most, but no one ever said the most
direct path is the best. There seems to me to be endless meaning
to be found in life, as much meaning as we can stand to seek. Choices
are not always clear, life is not always as we want it, but by God
it is life. L'CHIYEM!
Amen.
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