Sermon Archives

The Palace is in Flames

Once upon a time a traveler set forth on a journey into an unknown land. After many weeks of travel he saw a light in the distance and upon getting closer he saw a birah doleket, an illuminated palace from which light shone through the windows and spread light on the barren ground that surrounded the palace. “It cannot be,” said the traveler, that there is a palace such as this without an owner. Someone must be tending to the lamps. Someone must care about the palace. Immediately, the owner of the palace peeked through the window and said, “indeed, you have found me.”

The Midrash, in Bereishit Rabbah, shares this story as a description of Avraham’s discovery of God. He looked around at the world as no one had done before him and said, “a world of beauty and order and light could not have come into being on its own.” There must be a “baal ha’bayit;” someone must have built the palace and be committed to lighting the lamps. God, as it were, peeked through the window in response to Avraham’s question and said, “indeed you have found me.”

Avraham and Sarah are the heroes of Rosh Hashanah, they are the central characters of our Torah reading on these days and their spiritual virtuosity is a central theme of the elaborate and beautiful liturgical poetry that was written for this day over a period of centuries. When we celebrate the anniversary of Creation and once more crown God as King, we do so by reenacting the original discovery long ago that an illuminated palace must have an owner. A palace needs a king.

But there is another way to understand this midrash about Avraham’s discovery of God. 

Once upon a time a traveler set forth on a journey into an unknown land After many weeks of travel he saw a light in the distance and upon getting closer he saw a birah doleket, a palace that was in flames. As fire consumed the palace the flames spread chaotic shadows on the barren ground that surrounded the palace as sparks climbed into the sky. “It cannot be,” said the traveler, “that there is a palace that is being destroyed by flames and nobody is protecting the palace.” At that moment the owner of the palace peeked out of a window and said, “I am the owner of the palace; you have found me.”

According to this understanding, Avraham discovered God out of an awareness that a beautiful created world was being torn apart by human violence and chaos. God peeks through the window in view of Avraham as if to say, “Finally someone will be my partner and put out the flames that threaten to consume this world that I have created.”

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks was drawn to the inherent ambiguity of this Midrash and saw the essence of Jewish existence in the second reading.

“I believe that Abraham is the father of faith, not as acceptance but as protest – protest at the flames that threaten the palace, the evil that threatens God’s gracious world. We fight those flames by acts of justice and compassion that deny evil its victory and bring the world that is a little closer to the world that ought to be.”

Avraham and Sarah are the heroes of Rosh Hashanah. We celebrate their commitment to creating the first Jewish family so that we could care about the world that God created and its inhabitants, each and every one of whom deserves to live with the knowledge that they are a unique and beloved Divine creation “ve’yavin kol pa’ul ki atah p’alto we say in the amidah today again and again. 

Rosh Hashanah is the most Jewish holiday. The shul is more full today than it has been in months and, beyond our own congregation, there are hundreds of thousands of Jews who will hear the shofar today and who have not crossed the threshold of a synagogue all year.  As a young child I used to stand and watch on West End Avenue in amazement on Rosh Hashanah as family after family passed by in their festive and formal holiday clothing on their way to their local synagogue. Even though I grew up in a very Jewish neighborhood, it felt Jewish on Rosh Hashanah in a special way because that was the day, more than any other, when my Jewish neighbors cared about being Jewish in a synagogue.

But Rosh Hashanah is also the most universal human holiday in the Torah. It is not connected to agriculture in Eretz Yisrael. Rosh Hashanah is not connected to an event in Jewish history. The machzor, in the Mussaf amidah, references God remembering Noah “with love.” Nowhere in the Torah does it say that God remembered Noah”with love.’ Nowhere in Scripture and nowhere in rabbinic literature either is there any reference to Noah and his family and the animals on the ark being remembered by God “with love.” But the author of the Mussaf amidah of Rosh Hashanah was overcome with a Jewish responsibility for humanity and he added that phrase into the amidah.

Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish holiday for human beings. We coronate God as the sovereign of an illuminated palace in our prayers, but we also commit ourselves to serving the King through service of the world. We have a Jewish responsibility to God, and a Jewish responsibility to partner with God to put out the flames that endanger the world.

In just a few moments this dynamic will play itself out when we hear shofar blasts. To summarize a thousand years of halakhic development in just two minutes, the rabbis in the Talmudic tractate of Rosh Hashanah teach that we have a basic obligation to blow three sets of three shofar blasts on Rosh Hashanah. Three times three equals ten (because one of the blasts, the shevarim teruah, counts as two). Because of uncertainty about precisely what the “truah” blasts should sound like, we will entertain each of three possibilities resulting in ten times three equals thirty shofar blasts. The Talmud goes on to say that during one of the periods of ancient persecution we added a second set of thirty blasts during the Mussaf amidah because the Roman soldiers who were assigned to monitor the Jewish community would realize that at such a late hour of the day the shofar was not a call to a rebellious army to gather. That gets us to thirty plus thirty equals sixty blasts of the shofar. We will blow another forty at the end of Mussaf…because 100 is such a nice round number. 

But there is also a midrashic reference to 100 shofar blasts. When Sarah received news that her son Yitzhak had been placed on an altar for sacrifice, she cried out one hundred times and then she died. The commitment to blow the shofar for 100 blasts honors and commemorates Sarah’s commitment to build the first Jewish family and her fear and grief when she thought she had lost her son. When we hear the shofar blasts we hear the cry of every Jewish parent who is worried about her child and we should have in mind that the shofar blasts should reach heaven with the piercing cry of Klal Yisrael, of the collective Jewish people, who have lost so many children since last Rosh Hashanah and who fear losing even more. 

But the Talmudic discussion of the nature of the mysterious truah blasts goes in an unexpected direction. The Book of Judges records Sisera’s mother crying as she realizes that her son was not delayed on the battlefield as he dived up the spoils of war but that he was defeated and killed in battle. The truah blast in the Torah itself is linguistically connected to the cries of Sisera’s mother and so the rabbis analyze her cries and her tears as they teach us how to blow the shofar.

Sisera was our mortal enemy. And so was his mother. As she looks out the window waiting for his return she imagines him standing in triumph over the bodies of slaughtered Israelites whom he has killed. Sisera’s mother revels in her mental image of our defeat. But slowly, as he tarries, she has the awful realization that he will never return,  and it is those cries that teach us how to blow shofar.

God is the resident of a palace and God is peering at us through an open window waiting for our response. The palace is beautiful. The created world, and the human beings who fill our world, are beautiful creations and their existence is enduring proof of the wisdom and goodness of the Creator. When we stand in the shadow of Avraham and Sarah and coronate God we can do so as those overwhelmed by the beauty of the world and the beauty of the people in the world. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish holiday for the rest of humanity because we gather in shul inspired by God’s creation of each and every human life. 

And, the palace is on flames. Hatred and violence and death threaten to undo the very act of creation and God is peering at us through an open window waiting to see if we will help extinguish the flames. When we stand in the shadow of Avraham and Sarah and coronate God we can do so as those who are overwhelmed by the strength and danger of the forces of destruction that are opposed to all that God intended in creation. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish holiday for the rest of humanity because we gather in shul and commit ourselves to extinguishing the flames that threaten to destroy the palace. 

We extinguish the flames by building a world of justice and compassion and kindness. And we extinguish the flames by hearing Sisera’s mother in the blasts of the shofar.  Every human being was someone's child. We celebrate Yael for having killed Sisera because he was a vicious enemy, but Sisera was also someone’s child and the ability to hold those two truths in our hearts is necessary to extinguish the fires and save the palace. 

The loudest voices that surround us push to take sides. The world is terrible and we have to fix it. The world is wonderful and we have to celebrate it. Sometimes we feel called to celebrate a victory, or at least pray for one,  over our enemies. Sometimes we feel sad that victory entails death and suffering to innocent people. Do we emphasize being Jewish or do we emphasize being human? And indeed, it is appropriate to feel drawn towards one side,  and there are moments when we are forced to prioritize one side or another of the dialectic. The famous management consultant Marty Linsky once said “they’re called priorities because you only get one.”  We are not the children of Yishmael and we are not the children of Esav. 

But this midrash invites us to hear both things. It is like the optical illusion that can look like a duck or like a rabbit and we can constantly change our focus and switch back and forth between the two. At our best, humans have a remarkable capacity to hold onto multiple truths in a way that leads to harmony rather than cacophony. Love of God and Fear of God. Sacred chutzpah to stand upright before God in prayer, and recoiling in humility and shame at our inadequacy. Ahavat Yisrael and Ahavat HaBriot - love of the Jewish people and love for creation. 

 It is okay to feel lots of things at once. An ambiguous midrash invites us into a day when our capacity for care and concern and love can be expansive. 

Rav Benny Lau taught me that the word “berakhah” beyond its more common etymologies, can be linked to the word “havrakhah” which is a form of propagating grape vines by burying a branch under the earth until new roots emerge from that location. Our berakhot propagate life and create new self-sustaining sources of nourishment in the places where they set down new roots.

Sara shared with me a different entomology that she heard from Rabbi Tamar Elad Appelbaum who links the word to bereicha - a pool of water. The Jewish people are firefighters. Our berakhot extinguish consuming fires. That’s what it means to spread blessings. The palace is on fire and the entire world can be  illuminated by our blessings. 

Shannah Tovah.