Yom Kippur

The Complicity Trap

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Because it is Kol Nidre, it seems appropriate to start with a confession. But my confession will be made much easier based on an informal poll of the room: How many of you read Superman comic books when you were growing up?  My confession: At the age of 10, I avoided books like the plague and virtually all I read were Superman comic books.

 

This was a sermon delivered on Kol Nidre, October 2019, at Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation (Bethesda, MD). Rabbi Sid is Adat Shalom’s Founding Rabbi. 

Now in Superman’s universe there is a planet called Bizzaro in which everything is the reverse of how it should be. Beauty is hated; ugliness is revered; it is a crime to make anything perfect. The planet itself is not round, but a cube. And everyone’s behavior, at least by earthly standards, seems to be insane.

Now my parents thought that I was totally wasting my time reading Superman comic books. Imagine the joy I now feel that I can tap that experience to find a word that describes America in the year 2019. Bizzaro.  A world in which tax policy is used to expand the gap between the rich and the poor; the Environmental Protection Agency bans the use of scientific evidence that suggests that our climate is in crisis; homeland security is advanced by separating immigrant children from their parents; and energy policy is being driven a commitment to increase the market share of the oil and gas industry when the rest of the world is trying to promote renewable energy. Welcome to Bizzaro world, USA.  

One thing that seems to mystify even conservative leaning columnists is that so few prominent Americans are willing to challenge even the most absurd statements and actions of Donald Trump.  This “Hear no evil; see no evil; speak no evil” phenomenon seems to afflict leading Republican office holders; business leaders; high profile clergy and more.

I now imagine a roadsign that says: “Danger: Self-Righteousness Ahead”. It is easy to start finger-pointing at all the “bad guys” on the other side of the aisle.

But before we get too smug and self-righteous about criticizing those with whom we may disagree, let’s be clear. The behavior that I am describing here knows no political boundaries. It afflicts all of us. It is called complicity and we all fall into the complicity trap.  “Complicity” is the association with or participation in a wrongful or unethical act. It comes from the same French word, complicite, as in the word “accomplice” but it is far more subtle. If you were an accomplice to a bank robbery, you would be breaking the law and subject to a legal penalty, likely jail time. Complicity is not illegal primarily because, using the language of our High Holyday liturgy, it is not an act of commission; it most often is an act of omission or inattention.

But I want to suggest during this season of repentance, that some of the greatest injustices of our time exist because of complicity. For every overt immoral or unethical action by an individual, the net result of that action is made worse by thousands of acts of complicity. Here, I would suggest, that none of us escapes culpability.

 

I. Let’s look at two examples, gender bias and the climate crisis  

  • THE ABUSE OF AND ONGOING GENDER BIAS AFFECTING WOMEN

There are so many ways that our consciousness has been raised by the MeToo Movement about the abuse of women and ongoing gender bias in our society. In the high-profile cases, like Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein, we know that hundreds of people were well aware of their behavior. Some were enablers but many more were simply silent in the face of men with money and power. Such complicity allowed the sexual abuse of women and underage girls to take place. But to highlight such cases takes us off the hook too easily.

A good 50 years after the feminist movement gave voice to the ways that women faced discrimination in so many facets of life, we still find many forms of gender bias in the workplace and beyond. In a recent study of over 7000 corporate executives appearing in the Harvard Business Review, it was found that women outscored men on 12 of 16 criteria determined to be critical to being successful leaders in the private and public sector. And yet, men continue to claim over 80% of CEO positions, women are consistently paid less than men for the same work, and women continue to face all kinds of gender bias and harassment in the workplace. Such inequities persist only because too many of us choose to remain silent, and thus complicit, in the perpetuation of the old boys’ club that runs so much of our society.

Some 20 years ago I was responsible for organizing a panel of three speakers at a convention.  My third invitation went to a man, the third man I was inviting. That man asked me who else was on the panel. When it turned out to be two other men, he refused the invitation. He challenged me to find a suitable woman to take his place, feeling that it was unethical to suggest, even if only by implication, that men were the only experts on the panel’s topic. It was a lesson that I have taken to heart ever since. But what made the biggest impression on me was the integrity represented by that individual who refused to be complicit in perpetuating a system that continually puts men in the spotlight and consigns women to the shadows.

When I ask myself the question: Have I shown similar principle and courage to avoid being complicit in systems that perpetuate injustices not only towards women, but towards people of color, LGBTQ identified individuals or people who are differently abled? … I fear that I come up way short. I, myself, slide into the complicity trap, despite my best intentions.  

  • THE CLIMATE CRISIS 

A second example of how complicity works is the climate crisis. Even as evidence of global warming becomes more obvious by the day, we are moving backwards on constructive action to address the crisis. The US pulling out of the Paris Climate Accords signed in 2015 by 195 countries is but one of many examples.

On this day of reckoning, we are challenged to take some ownership of our own complicity on the climate crisis we are facing. Rabbi Fred has been a great teacher and role model for us on this issue, as recently as his sermon of last week, “Being Good Ancestors”.  Take note: Americans are only 5% of the world population but we consume 24% of the world’s energy. The lifestyles that we choose contribute to that number big time. Here are three concrete things every one in this room can act on:

  • Every utility company now offers options for consumers to acquire power from renewable sources. Make that choice for your own home even if it might cost a few more dollars a month.
  • Reduce the amount of meat and dairy in your diet and try to eat locally grown produce. The food industry is rapidly changing because of the changing eating habits of consumers. This will make a huge difference on our climate.
  • Even as the Trump Administration weakens fuel efficiency standards for the auto industry, you can choose to buy fuel efficient vehicles or electric cars.

On a macro level, the climate crisis needs to become one of the top three issues on which you vote for candidates for public office. When Al Gore ran for president in the year 2000, despite his record as a climate activist, he was convinced by his advisors not to make the environment a central feature of his campaign because the polling showed that it was not that important to voters. That has to change because public policy can change the climate habits of entire societies. Consider just three examples that put the US to shame:

  • In Sweden, 99% of solid waste is recycled or turned into biogas;
  • Germany has committed to become totally carbon neutral by the year 2050 and is passing legislation to reach that impressive goal;
  • In Denmark, high taxes on cars has resulted in 60% of people commuting to work by bicycles.

This summer I stood on the spot in Stockholm where one, Greta Thunberg, began her weekly Friday protests in front of the Swedish Parliament for more direct action on climate change. She was only 15 years old when she started doing this in August 2018. In March of 2019, inspired by Greta’s example, 1.4 million high school students from 112 countries left their schools to demand more action on the climate crisis. Thunberg was also one of the speakers at last month’s UN Climate Summit. As an act of principle, she decided to travel to NY on a zero emissions boat instead of flying. Now, in what is being described as the Thunberg Effect, thousands of Europeans are forgoing air travel for trains to reduce their carbon footprint on the planet.

Greta Thunberg, age 16, proves that with enough commitment and social conscience, one can avoid falling into the complicity trap.

 

II. The Price of Complicity

Jews, more than most, should know the price of complicity because we have paid that price in the not too distant past. Hitler’s final solution could not have succeeded to the extent that it did without massive complicity all around the world. There is considerable documentation of the complicity of the Poles aiding and abetting the Nazis in the roundup, deportation and killing of Jews. The Vatican was also complicit with the Nazis, making it extremely difficult for clergy of conscience to provide safe haven for Jews during the war. Even President Roosevelt faced accusations of complicity for refusing to authorize the bombing of train tracks to Auschwitz and putting harsh limitations on the admission of Jewish refugees to the United States. No one can even quantify the number of Jewish lives that were lost as a result of these three examples of complicity.

But just as with my examples of gender bias and climate change, in a sea of complicity there are always examples of courage and conviction. My summer travels put me in two places where such examples are celebrated today. In Stockholm there are two prominent monuments dedicated to Raoul Wallenberg. One is outside of the Great Synagogue and the other is in front of the Swedish Foreign Ministry. Wallenberg volunteered for the assignment to go to Budapest where he began to issue Swedish passports to Jews, helping them avoid deportation to Auschwitz. He also got funding to rent 32 buildings in Budapest which he declared Swedish territory and thus, exempt from Nazi edicts. All tolled, Wallenberg was reported to have saved the lives of some 10,000 Hungarian Jews. At the end of the war, Wallenberg disappeared, apparently captured and killed by the Soviet Army because they suspected that he was working with the CIA.

A similar story of courage and conviction is told in Denmark. The rescue of Danish Jewry is a remarkable story and is often held up as an example of what can happen when people stand up against tyranny. In 1943, a German diplomat in Copenhagen learned of plans by Berlin to deport the 7800 Jews of Denmark to concentration camps. He shared the information with the head of the Social Democratic party who then shared it with Rabbi Marcus Melchior, the chief rabbi of the Danish Jewish community. On the day before Rosh haShana, Rabbi Melchior told the community not to come to synagogue the next day but, instead, to leave their homes and go into hiding. Within 48 hours, most of Danish Jewry were being hidden by friends and neighbors. When the Nazis started their roundup, they found empty houses. Over the next several weeks, Sweden agreed to accept all Danish Jews to their shores and all kinds of boats were organized to ferry Jews from Danish fishing villages to Swedish territory. 7300 out of 7800 Danish Jews were rescued this way. Consider the contrast: Over 3 million Polish Jews perished during the Holocaust, abetted by the complicity of deeply anti-Semitic Poles. Yet only 102 Danish Jews were killed during the war. This is the stark price that Jews paid for complicity.  

 

III. The Jewish Moral Imperative

Few of us are faced with the life and death choices that confronted a Raoul Wallenberg or the Danish citizens who risked their lives to hide Jews. Yet we all know that our actions have consequences. Less obvious, is how our inactions have consequences as well.

Numerous Jewish texts instruct us to avoid the complicity trap that so often ensnares even the most well-intentioned people. Here are three:  

  1. In Deuteronomy ch. 22 the Israelites are commanded: lo tuchal lehitalem, “one is prohibited to turn away”. The original context is about the obligation to return lost property that one finds but the rabbis extended the law to an obligation to be responsive to any moral challenge. The rabbis were aware that human nature is pre-disposed to “look away” when faced with a difficult situation. They thus commanded: “Looking away is not an option.”
  2. In Leviticus ch. 19 Jews are commanded: lo taamod al dam reacha, “you may not stand idly by while the blood of your neighbor is being shed”. This commandment speaks directly to the obligation to intervene when others are in danger. For Jews who have been involved in human rights work all around the word, this verse has been a clarion call.
  3. Perhaps my favorite saying in this activist genre of Judaic teaching comes from Pirke Avot, the Ethics of our Ancestors (2:5). B’makom shayn anashim, tishtadel lehiyot ish, “In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.”. Of course, the literal, gendered translation is not only harsh on the ears but not fully expressive of the spirit of the Mishna. As many of you know, for more than 20 years I ran an organization called PANIM that was committed to teach Jewish youth about social activism through the prism of Jewish values. We put a far more accurate translation of this Mishna on the back of PANIM T-shirts that we gave to each participant. It reads: “In a place where there is no one of moral courage, strive to be courageous.” (hold up T-shirt).

 

IV. The Eternal Dissent

Religions, not unlike nations, are at their best when they are able to influence their adherents to a certain ethos that then becomes an aspirational way to be in the world. Kenya’s national motto is “Harambee”, Swahili for “we all pull together”. Liberia, a country settled by former Negro slaves from America, has a motto that says: “Love of liberty brought us here”. In contrast, and this will be most meaningful to Star Trek fans, the motto of the evil Klingon nation is: “Capture and oppress as many people and planets as possible”. Choose your motto!

In graduate school I read a book by prominent Reform Rabbi, David Polish called The Eternal Dissent. He makes the case that the national ethos of the Jewish people is to be a dissenting people, asking the hardest questions of God, of each other, and of the nations in which they would reside. David Polish would suggest that the motto of the Jewish people is: “In matters of conscience, do not shrink from dissent.” This tendency, well documented in Jewish history, did not always make the Jews popular. Quite the contrary in fact. But it did create in us a healthy resistance to the complicity trap. This dissenting nature is part of our Jewish legacy. Let’s own it!

The 18th century English philosopher, Edmund Burke said famously, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.”. Closer to our own tradition, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said: “Some are guilty; all are responsible”.

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My friends. We live in a time when much of what we cherish about this country is at risk. Democracy itself is being threatened. There are many who, fearful of the future and goaded by a strong, authoritarian leader, will dutifully conform and comply.

But Jews must take the road less travelled. It is the road of courage and conviction. We must have the moral tenacity to ask the hardest questions, to dissent and act on it when necessary and to resist the human tendency to fall into the complicity trap.

As we fully embrace the spirit of Yom Kippur, this day of atonement, reflection and resolve, may we have the strength to do what must be done. Let us take upon ourselves an 11th commandment: “Thou shall not be complicit.”  To be a Jew at this moment in history calls upon us to speak truth to power. May we, in the year ahead, summon the courage to do just that.

Welcome to the Tribe

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Kol Nidre, 2012:

Some years ago the Jewish Week asked me to write an op-ed before the High Holydays. At the risk of being thrown out of the rabbi’s union I said that I wasn’t quite sure how many of the Jews showing up for Rosh haShana and Yom Kippur were there for the prayers or, for that matter, to wrestle with the themes of forgiveness and repentance. Rather, they were there to hang out with other Jews. Well before the internet was invented, Jews created the original flash mob. “Pass the word. Rosh haShana and Yom Kippur are coming. Everyone will be there. Show up.” And we do.

There is something nice, comforting, even exciting about being with other people that you know and even many that you don’t know who share a common history, religion and ethnic folkways. Mordecai Kaplan hit the nail on the head when he called it “peoplehood.” In many ways, peoplehood is another term for tribalism. For me, there are no negative connotations to the term “tribalism”.  It does not require drums, feathers or body paint (although Adat Shalom is really big on drums). Tribalism is simply an extended family, and it carries all the charm and dysfunction of family as well. The tribal instinct of Jews is strong due to historic conditioning; in so many places over so many centuries, Jews were the oppressed minority. There was no one we could count on except each other.

There are, however, two problems with tribal Judaism. First is that we are becoming increasingly aware that tribal identity can be morally corrosive. It is too easy to get into our tribal cocoon and see everything exclusively from our own, limited perspective. Jews are certainly prone to the syndrome. There are many Jews who evaluate every matter of public policy based on whether or not it is “good for the Jews”. In Israel, the tribal path is the one that makes Palestinians invisible. Too many Jews in Israel and in the diaspora choose to ignore the abuses of Palestinian rights that take place in the territories every day and the discrimination facing the 20% of Israeli citizens who are Palestinian Arabs. Sometimes our tribal tendencies make us so obsessed with our own history of persecution and ongoing threats to Jewish survival that we cannot see how we might be complicit in the oppression of others.

There is also a second problem with tribal Judaism. Our children, next generation Jews, the Jews who are Millenials, are increasingly post-tribal. I call their identity “covenantal”. Covenantal Jewish identity is strongly rooted in universalist tendencies. Covenantal Jews have some awareness that Judaism brought many core values into the world like compassion, charity, human dignity and care for the natural world. They might even take pride in that fact. Yet they will see those values best realized in service to humanity at large. Because their primary identity is as global citizens, and their Jewish identity is secondary at best, covenantal Jews resist the bias of previous generations to preference Jewish loyalties. That bias relates to friendships, organizational affiliations, relationship to the state of Israel and even the choice of spouse. In fact, the suggestion to a covenantal Jew that they should only consider marrying other Jews sounds ethically offensive because they see it as violating a key Jewish value about treating all human beings equally.

As with all attempts at categorizing attitudes and behaviors, my tribal and covenantal categories are stereotypes. Many here will identify with some parts of each. The case I want to make is simple. The Jewish community we have today was created by tribal Jews for tribal Jews. To the extent that the next generation of Jews is more heavily covenantal than it is tribal, the Jewish community cannot conduct business as usual and expect that the Jewish community will still be around in 100 years. We are already seeing dramatic declines in all of the tribal indicators of a strong Jewish community including synagogue affiliation, participation in communal Jewish federation campaigns, support for the state of Israel and in-marriage.

So here is the challenge: Can we transmit a tribal Jewish story in a way that next generation, covenantal Jews can hear it?

This evening, I want to articulate the shape of this new narrative.  I’ve got two objectives. First, there are a fair number of covenantal Jews here tonight whose future commitment to their Jewish identity and that of their children is up for grabs. I am hopeful that what I say and how I say it might make them open to Jewish identity in a way that they may not have been before. Second, for those whose Jewish identity is stronger, I hope you will take on some missionary work. Not in the Mitt Romney/Mormon fashion; I don’t want you to go door to door either in your neighborhood, or God-forbid in a developing country across the globe. Yet you interact daily with family members, friends and colleagues who don’t totally “get” why you identify as strongly as you do with your Jewish heritage and with the Jewish community. I want to provide you with some language that will help you because I think that our Jewish identity should be a great source of pride that we are willing to share with others.

Let me start with a story. Last December, I led a group of 18 members of Adat Shalom on a trip to Haiti. Organized by Pamela Sommers and Wendy Swire, the group was evenly divided between adults and their children, ages 15 to 30. We stayed in Leogane, near the center of the earthquake that devastated the country two years ago, and close to the New Christian School of Pastor Johnny Felix which Adat Shalom is supporting financially. During the days we worked side by side with Haitians helping to build houses that would enable them and their families to move from one room wood huts with no plumbing to these new homes. In the evenings, after our physical labor was done, we explored the teachings of Judaism to understand how our work was a fulfillment of Judaism’s core commandments about tzedek u’mishpat, doing righteousness and justice in the world without regard to race, religion or nationality.

It was clear to me that the adults were more taken by the study of Jewish sources than the young people. Though respectful, my sense was that to the teens, the Jewish study was some nice window dressing offered by their rabbi to fill the evenings. To paraphrase the title of a sermon I gave from this bimah a few years ago: “What’s Judaism got to do with it?” The important work was happening during the day.

Then on Sunday we went to Pastor Johnny’s church. It became abundantly clear in that setting that our being Jewish mattered a great deal.

The church was in a tent with a dirt floor. The benches people sat on were cast offs. Some were broken. It was clear how poor these Haitian were. Most did not even have permanent homes. Yet they were dressed exquisitely and had been there already for two hours when we arrived for the last 90 minutes of the service. As we walked in we were greeted by a Hebrew song that I taught a year earlier when I first visited the congregation–Shabbat shalom.  Our visit fell during the festival of Chanukah. Pastor Johnny had invited me to preach the morning sermon so I chose to use the lessons of Chanukah to offer words of hope and encouragement to people that had endured not just the devastation of a natural disaster but whose families had endured decades of brutality, oppression and corrupt rule by a string of dictators. And when our makeshift Adat Shalom choir got up to teach some Hebrew songs, the congregation joined with passion to the words: Hine mah tov umah naim, shevet achim gam yachad, “how good and beautiful it is to be in this space, one tribe of sisters and brothers sitting together in the spirit of friendship and in unity.”

These Haitians were devout Christians who live on next to nothing. Most had not finished high school. Sunday worship was the highlight of their week and no one would dream of missing it. They were simple people but beautiful souls. They had never read Mordecai Kaplan. To them we were God’s chosen people who had come to worship with them, to support their pastor and to provide financial support to the school Pastor Johnny built to educate their children. To them we were the children of Israel doing God’s work in the world just as had been written in the Bible.  The fact that we were Jewish mattered and everyone of us in the Adat Shalom delegation walked out of that church tent knowing it.

The work we did was not benefiting Jews; we were engaged in helping poor Haitians whose predicament got worse as a result of an earthquake. But Judaism framed our entire experience. It helped us explore the meaning of faith and suffering. It offered us the wisdom passed down through the centuries about our obligations to the poor. And to the Haitians who had never met a Jew before, we were the children of Israel, behaving in accordance with the word of God as written in the Bible. We were engaged in covenantal work but it took on much greater meaning when understood and presented in the context of our tribal identity.

Which brings me back to the changing nature of Jewish identity in America. How do we fulfill the commandment from the Sh’ma: v’shinantem l’vanecha, “you shall teach it diligently to your children?” How do we convey that Judaism is not some relic of religious practices and superstitions handed down from the past but rather a way of being in the world that allows us to live a life that honors our particular history and urges us to make the world better for all of humanity?

I believe that being a member of the tribe that we call the Jewish people helps us to live lives of sacred purpose. I offered a glimpse of what that looks like by bringing you with me into Pastor Johnny’s church on Sunday morning. But too many Jews, disgusted by the excesses of tribal identity, come to the conclusion that they are better off, the world is better off, if they abandon their religious/cultural/ethnic identity. They are wrong.

It is not a coincidence that Jews have been in the leadership of movements for positive social change for more than a century in numbers totally disproportionate to our percentage of the population. I could cite the labor movement, the civil rights movements, the anti-apartheid movement, international human rights and a dozen more such causes. Even fairly assimilated Jews are powerfully motivated by the Jewish tribal story because it contains universal, covenantal lessons. We are a people who were born in slavery and transitioned to freedom. We are a people who are reminded again and again in our liturgy and sacred texts, “oppress not the stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt”. We are a people that has been history’s perpetual minority so we have worked to make the most radical teaching of Torah become part of a global ethic of human rights–that every human being has within them the spark of the Divine and must be treated with respect and dignity.

And you, my friends, by virtue of being part of the tribe called “the Jewish people” are potential carriers of that sacred covenantal message to a world that desperately needs it. I know many of you. And I know how many awesome good things you are already doing in the world. Yet I fear that there are still too many Jews who rejoice in their Jewish tribalism without thinking about the sacred purpose behind the tribe. And I also fear that too many Jews do the covenantal work but don’t value the tribe that is necessary to carry the message forward.

So much of the program here at Adat Shalom is designed to balance those twin commitments. Whether it is showing up the third Tuesday of every month when Adat Shalom staffs the Manna Food Center in Rockville; participating in Sukkot in April in conjunction with Yachad, to rehabilitate the home of a poor resident in our community; or perhaps signing up for Adat Shalom’s second annual service mission to Haiti Dec. 22nd-30th. I could give you a dozen other examples, but you get the point. The way Jews “walk the talk” of prophetic Judaism is by practice, practice, practice. I urge you in the year ahead to consider increasing your commitment to engage in just such kind of holy practice.

When we make “lives of sacred purpose” the central core of our Jewish identity, it is much easier to appreciate and celebrate the tribal aspects of our identity. I remember bumming around Europe as a college student with my best friend. In every city, we made a bee line to the synagogue or Jewish community center where we never failed to find a free meal, a warm bed and stories that gave me a new appreciation of the tenacity of Jewish survival and the mutual support from one Jew to the next that made that survival possible. Thirty years later Sandy and I were in Madrid during Passover. After we finished touring the Prado Museum we sat outside to eat lunch with the matzah and tuna fish that we had brought with us. A college student walked by and exclaimed: Matzah! She was a Jewish exchange student studying in Spain for the semester and had not made a single Jewish connection in all her time there, not even for Seder. But seeing matzah, all of her tribal bells starting ringing and she was elated. Of course, we invited her to share our matzah. We did not stay in touch, but I’d like to think that that little matzah moment helped connect this college student to her Jewish identity. Welcome to the tribe!

Some of you know that for more than 20 years, one of my central passions was the Soviet Jewry movement. I can think of no better example in my lifetime of how tribal ties between Jews was leveraged to achieve a greater good. In fact, the Soviet Jewry movement effected a change in the course of the history of the world. I was therefore deeply touched when just this past shabbat, David Silberman relayed a story initially told by Shlomo Carlebach during his session at shabbat breirot. It takes place in a Russian Gulag prison during the dark days of Communism. A Jew is serving a life sentence for his activism to emigrate to Israel, a crime under the Soviets. He hears that another Jew was just brought to the prison and he is committed to seek him out. During their one hour of exercise in the yard, he sees the new inmate, and falls into step beside him.

“Shalom Aleichem landsman”, he says in a whisper.

The new inmate glares at him. “Are you crazy? You will get us shot.”

“Do you know what tonight is?” asks the first Jew. “It is the start of Yom Kippur.”

“Big deal. We are Jews. So what? What has it gotten us?”

“I’ve been in this prison for ten years. You are the first Jew I have seen in all of this time. We must share this night together in some way. Let’s sing Kol Nidre together. Do you remember the melody?”

Tears filled the new inmate’s eyes. He whispered: “I used to sing Kol Nidre with my father in synagogue as a young boy. I haven’t heard it since then.”

So the two of them begin to chant the Kol Nidre melody together very softly. Suddenly they see the guards in the watchtower pointing their guns at them. The captain climbs down from the tower, walks in their direction with gun drawn. “What are you two Jews doing?” he demands.

“We are just singing a song.”

“Let me hear it again” said the captain. The two Jews are certain that this will be their final act before they are shot. The captain listens for a couple of minutes, allowing the prisoners to sing the melody through.

And then the captain said: “I was taken away from my family at age 14 and put into the Tsars army. I have been in the army my entire adult life. But your melody brought back memories that I had long forgotten–going to synagogue with my father, huddling under his talis as the cantor sang the Hebrew prayers. Now I realize that I was born a Jew even though it has been decades since I had anything to do with my people. I cannot help you out of this prison, but thank you for helping me remember who I am.”

Welcome to the tribe indeed.

Each of us asks ourselves. “Who am I? What parts of my identity are most meaningful? What is the legacy that I want to pass on to the next generation? For me, there is no part of my identity that confers more meaning than being part of the Jewish people. Not just the tribal part of the Jewish people but, as well, the piece of the Jewish story that compels me to ask myself every day whether I am worthy of my ancestors who stood at Sinai to receive the covenant of Torah.

At this time of the year we are painfully aware of our own mortality. Part of the beauty of connecting our personal life journey to the Jewish tribal story is that we know that the work of healing a broken world neither started with us, nor will the work end with us. To the extent that our values are important to us we hope that they will be carried on by our children, our grandchildren and generations well into the future. If we are successful perhaps our sacred tribal legacy might just bring the world a tad closer to redemption.