Sermon Archives

Heroic Potential

One of the saddest experiences I have had over the course of a very sad year was listening to the livestream broadcast of Rachel Goldberg Polin speaking at the funeral of her son Hersh, just days after his murdered body was recovered and brought to Israel for burial. An extended clip of that hesped was broadcast here in DC at a memorial vigil that Federation convened.  In the shared car ride back to Shepherd Park following the vigil our conversation turned to the boundless admiration that we had for Rachel and her husband Jon who had emerged over the course of the year as being nothing less than heroes of the Jewish people. 

Just weeks earlier - and less than two months ago - Rachel and Jon had addressed the world from the stage of the DNC where they advocated on behalf of their son alongside all of the other hostages in a brief speech that managed to exemplify moral clarity and eloquence and parental love and concern for humanity. And that speech, and their hespedim  delivered at their son’s funeral, were fully consistent with their messages to the world over the course of the year. Amidst unspeakable sadness I felt tremendous admiration that they were able to stand on that stage and represent the grief and yearning of the Jewish soul. 

Despite having perhaps a dozen mutual friends, I met Rachel for the first time last summer in Jerusalem. She spent, perhaps, 20 or 30 minutes in conversation with my cohort of North American rabbis and in this setting she shared some of the spiritual practices that reinforced her faith and she shared how that faith, that emunah, sustained her and gave her the fortitude to continue her struggle. All of us at that meeting felt like we had been in the presence of greatness.

Under normal circumstances people who emerge as great leaders or great artists or great athletes or great scholars follow a unique but understandable path towards greatness. Typically a candidate for high office seeks that office after many years of public service and leadership. A star athlete was probably noticed as a high school student, if not younger. The greatest Talmidei Hakhamim, great rabbinic scholars, would have most likely been noticed as brilliant students while still teenagers. 

But that is not how the hostage families became heroes. They lived honorable and productive and beautiful lives in relative obscurity. Until, as if by chance, they were revealed to be heroes. It was the impossible and unforeseen circumstances of their lives that revealed to the world their potential for heroism and greatness. 

This dynamic is exactly how Ramban, Nachmanides, describes the akeidah, the binding of Isaac in this morning’s Torah reading. 

וַיְהִ֗י אַחַר֙ הַדְּבָרִ֣ים הָאֵ֔לֶּה וְהָ֣אֱ-לֹהִ֔ים נִסָּ֖ה אֶת־אַבְרָהָ֑ם וגו׳ 

“And God tested” Avraham, we read this morning. What could it mean for God to test someone? God knows who we are and has no need to test any hypotheses to learn something about the world. Ramban says that tests, from God’s perspective, are about revealing potential:

“On the part of the Holy Blessed One, a trial or test is a command that the one being tested should bring forth the matter from the potential into actuality so that he may be rewarded for a good deed, not for a good thought alone.”

Avraham and Sarah and Yitzhak were known to God as the worthy founding-family of the Jewish people. Their commitments, not only to righteous behavior (like Noah and others before them) but also to the potential of education to transmit righteous living from one generation to the next was known by God years earlier:

כִּ֣י יְדַעְתִּ֗יו לְמַ֩עַן֩ אֲשֶׁ֨ר יְצַוֶּ֜ה אֶת־בָּנָ֤יו וְאֶת־בֵּיתוֹ֙ אַחֲרָ֔יו וְשָֽׁמְרוּ֙ דֶּ֣רֶךְ ה לַעֲשׂ֥וֹת צְדָקָ֖ה וּמִשְׁפָּ֑ט וגו׳

״For I have known about him, that he will instruct his children and his posterity to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is just and right.”

The question that animates Ramban was a philosophical question. What could it mean for a human being to be tested by a God who knows all. And so Ramban gives a philosophical answer to his philosophical question: when God conducts a test its goal is not for God to discover new information but rather it is a command that a potential capacity be actualized in the world. 

Modern people have different questions. Our questions are primarily ethical. The akeidah, for many of us,  is like a black box at the heart of Jewish theology.  The idea that God could ever demand the sacrifice of a child fills us with horror only surpassed by the idea that a loving father could contemplate doing so. . But if you pay even a modicum of attention to the liturgy of this season the akeidah is inescapable. 

But Ramban points us in the direction of  a solution to our problem as well. The akeidah was not a test to determine what would happen if a loving and pious father received an impossible command. Rather, the akeidah was a circumstance that revealed something positive that was already true. The love of Avraham and Yitzhak and Sarah for one another and for God was already praiseworthy and already earned them a special place in God’s plan for history. The akeidah is what made those already existing admirable traits visible to the world. 

The heroic hostage families did not become noble and heroic figures in the past year. They didn’t need to be the victims of kidnappings or murder in order to be heroic. The lives they lived for years as private citizens were lives of community and commitment and decency and kindness. Their family tragedies showed their greatness to the world but did not create it. 

The outrageous tragedy of our moment is that so many of the stories of the heroism of hostage families have already had tragic endings and infuriating endings. Avraham’s heroic potential was actualized in a way that enabled Yitzhak to survive. That is the way the story is supposed to work. But Ramban’s idea of trials that reveal potentials is an idea that can help us find the resolve and grit that we need in 5785. 

This past year we have all experienced, alongside grief and anger, great disappointment. The world is more cruel and callous than some of us had hoped. Allies and friends let us down when we needed support and solidarity. 

Some of you dedicate so much of your life to promoting Jewish identity; this year thousands of American Jews were too scared to acknowledge their identity in public and among their erstwhile friends. So many of you have dedicated years of your life to build a secure Israel only to see Israel’s vulnerabilities exposed to friend and foe. Some of you have dedicated your lives to peace only to see the dream of peace receding ever more far into the future.

Some of you worked hard and devoted yourselves to professional responsibilities to advance your careers, support your families, and build a prosperous and flourishing world. And those efforts might not have gained much traction this year. Our wheels sometimes seem to spin. We have invested in relationships with family and friends and those gestures of friendship and love have not always been reciprocated as we hoped they would be.  

The grit and resolve and determination and persistence that you demonstrated on behalf of noble causes revealed your potential for goodness and greatness even if your efforts were not fully successful or were not successful at all. 

Ramban’s notion of a trial that reveals hidden potential does not depend on a happy ending. Since God does not conduct a test to learn something that God has no need to learn (since God already knows), the point of the test is not the outcome but what it reveals about us.

The noble causes that you have pursued, with lots of success, or without any discernible success, have revealed something about who you are. The noble causes and upright values that you brought into the world through your commitments and efforts have demonstrated nothing less than heroism. And that sort of heroism, in large ways and in small ways, is needed in the world and needed in our shul in 5785.

This is a lesson that all Americans should learn as well as we enter the final weeks of the election season and the first weeks of the post-election season. 

During a brief trip to Jerusalem several years ago, which, like our own time, was during a fraught period of political agitation, I ran into an acquaintance while walking home from dinner on erev Shabbat .(Do serendipitous encounters take place with as much frequency and significance anywhere else but Jerusalem?) She made aliyah many years ago and is a Judaic scholar and academic and someone who has been teaching Torah in various capacities for decades. After exchanging pleasantries we reflected on life in disorienting times and she commented that “Americans now need to actualize our values.” For too long, too many Americans have been satisfied with passively associating ourselves with the virtues that we embrace. 

Since that conversation I have seen many Americans replace that urgent need to make our values real in the world with an ever more strident and insular partisan identity. Political fandom is an inefficient way to actualize anything positive in the world. 

And Judaism is not a spectator sport. 

Even in our small circle of our shul community, we are called upon to actualize the potential that exists for the sort of thriving community that we want for ourselves. If we want to live in a warm and hospitable community where people exploring Judaism can find an entry point or where those who are considering making Torah and Mitzvot a more central orienting point of their lives can find support and camaraderie and hospitality, then we need to sign up to host guests whom we don’t already know at our Shabbat and yom tov meals and we need to greet strangers when we see them at shul before we rush to talk to our friends. 

If we want our shul to be the beating heart of Jewish life in Shepherd Park, then a very diverse group of people will need to sit down at the beginning of the week and decide how many and which weekday tefilot you can attend and then work your schedule around those commitments.

Within our families and among our friends - do we think of ourselves as patient and loving parents? Do we think of ourselves as reliable friends or loyal spouses? Those wishes for ourselves, those real potentials that exist for us, need to be actualized in the world. 

This year has taught us that actualizing our values in the world is not the same as being successful. The “trial” that causes our potential to become known and apparent is not won by achieving something in the world but about clarifying who we were all along. Every hard undertaking, whether within the intimate confines of our closest relationships, or the uncelebrated efforts to sustain a community, or the heroic advocacy that will be remembered forever by the Jewish people - all of them, every struggle we undertake, demonstrates to God and demonstrates to ourselves, who we were all along or who we have become.

Many years ago a teacher of mine quoted CS Lewis to the effect that villains made for more interesting literature than virtuous characters. But outside the world of fiction, virtuous and ethical people are not only more pleasant to be around but are also more interesting. Our struggles to actualize goodness are intense struggles and the intensity should animate our lives and inspire us to show up for the causes we believe in with energy and excitement. 

This is a time of trial. And the world, and our community, and our friends and family, needs us so very much to step forward and answer God’s call. But this is also a season that has reminded us to take stock of the blessings that we already have. May our potential for heroism inspire the world and may we actualize that potential for good under happy and healthy and peaceful circumstances in the new year.

Shannah Tovah.