Sermon / D’var Torah for Parashat Vayikra
Rabbi Andy Vogel
Erev Shabbat: Friday, March 18, 2016
Temple Sinai, Brookline MA
Shabbat shalom. As you
know, I don’t usually give a formal sermon, and prefer to engage on most
Shabbat evenings with you in a conversation about the ideas that emerge from
the week’s Torah portion. But this week,
tonight, I’m particularly concerned about the state of politics in our country,
and I feel the need to share with you my thoughts in a little bit more of a
formal way.
I want to be upfront
with you: I'm troubled by what's happening in our political world, I'm very
troubled by the messages and values coming from Donald Trump and many of the
things that he has said in the political sphere. I’m particularly concerned that so many American
voters have supported his world-view, a world-view that provokes and inflames and
increases bigotry, hatred and xenophobia, especially against Hispanics and
Muslims and other minorities. He has made offensive comments about women,
people of color, and other groups – and he was very slow to distance himself
from former Klansman David Duke. And I’m
deeply concerned about the way he has condoned violence, and incited violence
at his rallies and campaign events – and hinted at “riots” at the Republican
convention later this summer if he is not nominated.
As you know, we at Temple Sinai, and I personally, are always very
careful not to endorse or oppose any particular political party or political
candidate. That's consistent with the IRS tax code rules, and it's also
consistent with what's appropriate. It wouldn't be right for a house of worship
to endorse any particular person or party, or to engage in partisan politics,
because we stand for values, and ideas, and sacred teachings that guide our
way, not for individuals or parties. To take sides with or against any party
or individual violates our own internal guidelines as well as federal rules. I want to remain consistent with that
guideline of the past. It is appropriate
for a synagogue or a rabbi to speak out about values, ideas, general policies
and attitudes, and that’s what I intend to do.
What I want to address is the deeply disturbing trend across America
today – a values and attitudes – that I feel the need to speak out about, about
which I can’t be silent. As always, this
week’s Torah portion speaks exactly to the particular moment we are living in
in our lives. In Parashat Vayikra, Leviticus
chapter 5 verse 1 says:
וְנֶפֶשׁ
כִּי-תֶחֱטָא וְשָׁמְעָה קוֹל אָלָה
וְהוּא עֵד אוֹ
רָאָה אוֹ יָדָע אִם-לוֹא יַגִּיד וְנָשָׂא עֲוֹנוֹ
“If a you hear a public statement that involves sinful or harmful
behavior, and you are a witness to it – that is, you see it, or you know that
something is amiss, and you don’t speak up,
– אִם-לוֹא יַגִּיד, you
bear your responsibility.” (Lev. 5:1)
That verse instructs us that we cannot remain silent when something
terribly wrong is going on. It reminds
us that spiritual leadership needs to be vocal, we must play a role when moral
values are at stake – and that there is a spiritual obligation to do so.
After all, to be Jewish is to engage in the world. Judaism is deeply concerned about the state
of the world. As one of the great Reform
leaders, Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, taught: “The Jewish religion is
politics. From its roots in creation to
its ultimate working-out in the Messianic redemption, Judaism is about the
human community. … A ‘good Jew’ [in
quotes] rejoices to find that he/she is obligated to humanity.”[1] We must be engaged in the world. It is deeply Jewish to work to make our world
a better place, and the most powerful way to do that is through public policy, in
the public sphere, through government which can better society, and through
politics.
This week, the leadership of the Reform movement issued a very
strong statement in response to the news that AIPAC, the large Israel lobby
group, will have Donald Trump speak at its convention on Monday. (By the way, I am not addressing tonight the larger
issues of AIPAC and its agenda – that’s a whole different discussion.) The leaders of the Reform movement spoke out
– not to endorse or oppose Trump’s candidacy – but to address the very serious
and grave effects that he is having upon the political discourse in our
country, to express their own opposition to certain positions of his: his support of the use of torture, his
proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the country, his anti-immigrant
rhetoric, his demonization of African-Americans and women. The URJ statement reminds us of the values
that we as Reform Jews “hold most dear – justice, mercy, compassion,
peace.” And, finally, the Reform
movement statement urges us all to make our voices heard. It concludes with the
words: “We will find an appropriate and powerful way to make our voices
heard.” That, to me, is also the meaning
of the verse from this week’s Torah portion:
וְהוּא
עֵד אוֹ רָאָה אוֹ יָדָע אִם-לוֹא יַגִּיד וְנָשָׂא עֲוֹנו If we do not speak out when something is
wrong, we bear our own responsibility for not doing so.
I believe that many of us in this Sanctuary this evening, if not
all of us, share similar values, and similar concern about the state of recent
political discourse.
But now, I want to say that it is time to speak out. It is time for all of us to
speak out, and not to remain silent. We
have seen the effects of remaining silent, when a population assumes that the
storm will pass, or that “the annoying little man” will go away. This is not a situation in which we have the
luxury of that assumption. Leaders have
power, and their power has far-reaching ramifications.
I’m obviously concerned about who becomes president, the most
powerful public office in the world. But
the phenomenon of Donald Trump is about something bigger than even that. Perhaps you saw the article in the
Boston Globe today about the woman who wrote a letter to the editor a few weeks
ago in opposition to Trump – this week, she received in the mail an anonymous
letter containing the KKK symbol, a clear threat. This woman is a Jewish woman, an Austrian
refugee from the time of Hitler[2]
– and the letter she received in the mail is being treated as an act of hate, clearly
incited and encouraged, by Donald Trump and his rhetoric.
This example is just one of many, many of the ripples emanating
forth from a presidential campaign season laced everywhere with bigotry and
incitement.
When any public figure – no matter who, whether a candidate for
public office, a current office-holder, a celebrity, or anyone – speaks to the
public in the language of hate again and again, whenever a public figure inspires
acts of hate among the general populace, we need to speak out.
We need to speak out. Not
just the leaders of the Reform movement in New York, not just me, your rabbi,
not just the newspaper writers on editorial pages, but all of us. It’s our moral duty. In appropriate ways, within the guidelines of
the federal tax code, I’m speaking out tonight, against hatred,
and for a better vision of our world. I am a member of the Brookline Clergy
Association, along with rabbis, priests and minsters from other houses of
faith, and I expect that that interfaith association will issue our own
statement sometime soon. We create real
power when we come together to build alliances and coalitions with others who
share our vision, vision inspired by the spiritual values of our tradition.
I encourage you to share your feelings, concerns, and values
appropriately – as a Jew connected to a spiritual vision and connected with
spiritual leadership – and that you do so out loud, in print, on traditional
media and on social media, at the oneg downstairs, on your way out of
the oneg, et cetera (!), so that people can hear, and so that you can be
part of a movement for the best values of our society, a movement inspired by
the spiritual vision of Judaism.
Shabbat shalom.
[1] Rabbi
Arnold Jacob Wolf (1924-2008), in The Condition of Jewish Belief (originally
published in 1966 as an issue of Commentary magazine), Aronson Press
(1989), p. 272.
