By Rabbi Dov Gartenberg
Kol Nidre Sermon in Santa Fe, New Mexico
Kol Nidre 5785, October 11, 2024.
The Book of Maccabees in the Apocrypha tells of an early incident in the resistance to King Antiochus by a certain group of Jews. They had fled to the caves to avoid the prohibitions on Jewish observance imposed by the king. The king's army had found them at the caves. On the Sabbath day, the commanding general demanded that the Jews come out and obey Antiochus’ orders.
“We will not come out, nor will we do what the king commands and so profane the Sabbath day.” Then the enemy quickly attacked them. But the Jews did not answer them, hurl a stone at them, or block up their hiding places, for they said, ‘Let us all die in our innocence; heaven and earth testify for us that you are killing us unjustly.’ So, they attacked them on the Sabbath, and they died, with their wives, children, and livestock, to the number of a thousand persons.” (2:32–38).2
This terrible incident took place as the main Jewish insurgency led by the Maccabees was gathering steam. Mattathias and his sons came to a historic conclusion. “If we all do as our kindred have done and refuse to fight with the Gentiles for our lives and for our ordinances, they will quickly destroy us from the earth”
This story has always fascinated me. What it does reveal is a long-lasting tension between the ideal of human flourishing in the Torah and the realities of surviving in a dangerous world. The Judaism of the Torah is very idealistic. Shai Held in his marvelous new book, Judaism is About Love, writes, God’s faith in us (the Jewish people) is one reason Jewish ethics is so ambitious and demanding. Beyond telling us what we may and may not do, Jewish ethics prescribes goals for who and how we must be. Despite the excuses and exceptions, we make for ourselves, it tells us we are capable of living lives animated by love, mercy, compassion, and generosity.”
Over history, Jewish communities and individuals have tried to live our lives based on Torah and its teachings on how to live a life of goodness. However, reality intervened. Judaism, a religion that is about loving God and others, had to account for the needs of self-defense. Jews aspired to perform acts of Hesed (steadfast love) but could not ignore Bitachon (security)- Jewish communities were organized around tzedakah- (support of the needy), but also had to organize for haganah (self-defense).
To be a Jew is to be beleaguered. Judaism is a religion, and a culture of beleaguerment. I am not saying this as a criticism, but as an observation about my own rabbinic career and my Jewish life.
As a Rabbi and a Jew, I have been inspired by Torah to live a loving, kind, and generous life. I have since early adulthood resonated with the Jewish traditions of hospitality. In my rabbinate I have always given a special place to Hesed groups in my congregation and to Shabbat hospitality. When I left the pulpit in 2004, I focused my rabbinate on creating organizations organized around Shabbat hospitality and organized Hesed.
I founded Shabbat with Friends three years ago because my conviction that Jewish community should be centered on loving acts.
For me, the proof that Judaism is about love is captured in this story about Avraham’s response to the 3 travelers he saw passing his tent as he was recovering from circumcising himself as God commanded him to do in chapter 17 of Genesis. Genesis chapter 18 opens with these verses:
יהוה
appeared to him by the terebinths of Mamre; he was sitting at the entrance of the
tent as the day grew hot. Looking up, he saw three figures standing near him. Perceiving this, he ran from the entrance of the tent to greet them... he (Avraham) said, My lords! If it please you, do not go on past your servant.”
Rav Yehuda said that Rav said...: "Hospitality toward guests is greater than receiving the Divine Presence, as when Abraham invited his guests it is written: “ And he said: Lord, if now I have found favor in Your sight, please pass not from Your servant” (Genesis 18:3). Abraham requested that God, the Divine Presence, wait for him while he tended to his guests appropriately.
Midrash concludes with a famous observation.
וּגְדוֹלָה הַכְנָסַת אוֹרְחִים מֵהַקְבָּלַת פְּנֵי שְׁכִינָה.
"Welcoming guests is greater than receiving the face of the Divine Presence."
This is hutzpadik. The Rabbis endorse rudeness toward God. But God has put us in the position of being rude to God to fulfill the commandments that God has given us. As Shai Held writes, “God wants partners-partners in love and partners in world-building. God wants us to reciprocate God’s love and God wants us to be the means whereby God’s love for others is concretely expressed. The Torah reveals that God loves the stranger in part by commanding us to love the stranger; we serve as God’s hands, how God accomplishes God’s ends.”
After all, the three travelers, while appearing as men, are God’s messengers-angels, sent by God to deliver a message.
But anyone aware of Jewish history and experience can imagine a situation where Avraham could fear that the 3 travelers intend to harm him. Since October 7th, we have been given another reminder that we are vulnerable. The loving welcome of strangers is trumped by the fear that their presence evokes. The stranger may hate us. If we let down our guard, he will kill us.
This is not false. The Jew must circumscribe his religious ideals to guarantee his survival. Yeshaia Liebowitz, the great Israeli philosopher, was at a gathering of Christian theologians a few years after World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. They asked him why he was a Zionist. He answered with his typical honesty, "Israel is an endeavor to liberate Jews from being ruled by the Gentiles." Like many Zionists of his day, he saw the need to establish the Jewish state as collective act of self-defense and security, since the nations of the Gentiles did not protect European Jewry from the murderous persecutions and final solution of the Nazis.
We Jews are beleaguered people because of the huge gap between the ideals of Torah and the necessities of providing safety for our communities. To share a vivid example of this, consider this opening passage from the Passover Haggadah. One of the early passages in the Haggadah is the Ha Lach Ma Anya.
הָא לַחְמָא
עַנְיָא דִּי אֲכָלוּ אַבְהָתָנָא בְּאַרְעָא דְמִצְרָיִם. כָּל דִכְפִין יֵיתֵי וְיֵיכֹל, כָּל דִצְרִיךְ יֵיתֵי וְיִפְסַח. הָשַּׁתָּא הָכָא, לְשָׁנָה הַבָּאָה בְּאַרְעָא דְיִשְׂרָאֵל. הָשַּׁתָּא עַבְדֵי, לְשָׁנָה הַבָּאָה בְּנֵי חוֹרִין.
THIS IS THE BREAD OF OPPRESSION our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. Let all who are hungry come in and eat; let all who are in need come and join us for the Pesaḥ. Now we are here; next year in the land of Israel. Now – slaves; next year we shall be free.
It was an early seder custom to open the door at the beginning of the seder when we chanted Ha Lalachma Anya to symbolically or even physically welcome strangers to the seder table. But the fear of hostility led to the moving of the door opening much later in the seder when we pour wine for the cup of Elijah after the meal. At the seder, we open the door to welcome Elijah. In traditional Hagaddot, the welcoming of Elijah, who is understood to be the harbinger of the Messiah, is accompanied by this chant.
שְׁפֹךְ חֲמָתְךָ אֶל־הַגּוֹיִם אֲשֶׁר לֹא יְדָעוּךָ וְעַל־מַמְלָכוֹת אֲשֶׁר בְּשִׁמְךָ לֹא קָרָאוּ. כִּי אָכַל אֶת־יַעֲקֹב וְאֶת־נָוֵהוּ הֵשַׁמּוּ. שְׁפָךְ־עֲלֵיהֶם זַעֲמֶךָ וַחֲרוֹן אַפְּךָ יַשִּׂיגֵם. תִּרְדֹף בְּאַף וְתַשְׁמִידֵם מִתַּחַת שְׁמֵי יְיָ.
שְׁפֹך
ְ"POUR OUT Your rage upon the nations that do not know You, and on regimes that have not called upon Your name. For Jacob is devoured; they have laid his places waste. Pour out Your great anger upon them, and let Your blazing fury overtake them. Pursue them in Your fury and destroy them from under the heavens of the LORD."
As a rabbi, I have never belittled the preoccupation of Jews both in Israel and in the diaspora with safety, security, and self-defense. I give a significant annual contribution to the ADL and to IDF charities. I have seen repeatedly that safety and security of the Jewish people is central to the identity of many Jews.
The greatest leaders of the Jewish people emerged from their response to witnessing physical violence or vicious hatred against their fellow Jews. Moshe Rabbeinu kills an Egyptian taskmaster who is beating a Hebrew slave. Theodor Herzl, some 3000 years later, is moved to create and lead the Zionist movement after reporting on the huge Anti-Semitic backlash that arose in France to the protests seeking exoneration for Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jew, who was wrongfully convicted of espionage.
Since October 7th, most Jews in Israel and the Diaspora have returned to what Mattathias came to learn 2.200 years ago. Does that mean that the Judaism of love, of hesed, of tzedaka, of ethical primacy is eclipsed? My struggle this year was how to prevent the flood of hatred, antisemitism, virulent anti-Zionism from overwhelming my devotion to the Jewish emphasis on Hesed-steadfast love.
My fear is that the overwhelming reaction to October 7th is to run to the barricades of self-defense while we anxiously set aside the Jewish teachings and practices of hesed. I have seen my purpose this year as preserving and protecting the Jewish commitment to Hesed, while most of the Jewish people are understandably preoccupied on physically protection the Jewish people and the release of the hostages in Gaza.
I turn again to Judaism is About Love by Shai Held to explain my continuing focus on hesed in my work as a rabbi, while acknowledging the need for Jewish self-defense.
“God knows who we are - knows of the cruelty and callousness of which we are capable; knows how trapped many of us are within the prisons of our own egos; knows how far we often stray from the divine ideals of love and compassion and the pursuit of justice—and yet, in the face of all that, God believes in us. God believes in our capacity for love.” p. 420
“God does not merely presuppose our capacity for love. God actively implants it within us. So, God knows that we are capable of love. To be sure, we are capable of other things too, like hatred, and brutality, and indifference to the suffering of others.” p. 421.
But a basic Jewish teaching, according to Held, is that “God has faith in our capacity to love.” My purpose is to respond as a partner of God, in bringing hesed to the world.
Where is the Jewish teaching of hesed exemplified? In the Book of Ruth. We should remember the narrative. The Book of Ruth tells the story of a family in major crisis. Amid famine, a family from Bethlehem - a man named Elimelekh, his wife, Naomi, and their two sons move to neighboring Moab. Elimelekh dies followed by the deaths of the two sons who leave behind their Moabite wives. Naomi is bereaved and bereft. Ruth, one of her daughters-in-law acts with hesed, with faithful and steadfast love. Her love goes far beyond the call of duty or legal obligation. Acting with hesed, Ruth works to restore Naomi’s fortunes and to help her overcome her bitterness and dejection. Ruth loves Naomi back to life.
There are two essential teachings of the Book of Ruth. First, the book is not just about people doing acts of hesed, it is about the kinds of healing, transformation, and redemption that lives of hesed make possible. Ruth reminds us through powerful example about the kind of life Torah intends for us to live: lives animated by love manifested in concrete acts of kindness and generosity.
Second, the book of Ruth opens by situating the story in dark times: The story takes place in a time of moral decay and social unraveling: unrestrained by fear of God or legal authorities, people did whatever they pleased. (Judges 21:25). Ruth’s story reminds us that we are capable of deep, transformative love even (and sometimes especially) in the grimmest times and the bleakest places.
The story of Ruth’s steadfast love for Naomi is a reminder that a devotion to Hesed, to a life of lovingkindness is imperative, especially in difficult times. This is not only true for individuals, it is crucial for communities that seek to uphold Jewish teachings of collective action. As the popular Jewish protest song, Olam Hesed Yibaneh-the world is built on hesed - reminds all of us. The basic acts of kindness must be sustained by our community. We rededicate ourselves to intentional acts of hesed: visiting the sick, comforting the bereaved, and welcoming guests to our table.
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