Rosh Hashanah Sermon
5766—2005
Rabbi Jonathan Miller
Temple Emanu-El
Birmingham, Alabama

The kids get off from school today because it is Rosh Hashanah. One of the things they learn at school is how to take tests, how to remember enough at least for the moment to give the teacher back what is required and then file it away someplace in the gray cells between their ears. Rosh Hashanah is called Yom Hazikaron, the Day of Remembrance. This is God’s test for us—what does He remember? And it is our test of God—what do we remember?

God remembers our sins. God remembers our frailties. God remembers our strengths. God remembers our righteousness. And God throws all of that into a pot, stirs it together, adds some Divine love, mercy and justice, and out comes the mélange that is our lives. God remembers everything—the grandness of our spirit and the shortness of our temper; the generous nature of our being and our tightfisted stinginess; our hopes and our faith and our fears and our doubts—these are who we are and these are what we are made of, and of these God forgets nothing.

Fortunately, remembrance works both ways. As God remembers us, we remind God of what we remember. We remember the suffering of our people, and we remind God that we have kept faith with our tradition, even though we have suffered. We remember our exile from eretz yisrael, the Land of Israel, and we remember God’s redeeming promise to end all exile. Even though there are so few Jews left in the world, we remember God’s promise to our ancestors that we will become as numerous as the stars in the heavens and the sand on the seashore, and that all the nations of the world will be blessed because of us. We remind God of what we remember too.

When we read the shofar service, we remind God to remember the sacrifice that Abraham made on Mt. Moriah, how he was even willing to offer his child as a sacrifice if this is what God would demand of him. When God would demand, Abraham would offer. God demanded Abraham’s love, Abraham’s faith, Abraham’s belief in God’s beneficence, and Abraham’s hope for the future. Abraham would pass the test that God laid out for him. So every year when Rosh Hashanah rolls by, we say to God, remember our ancestor Abraham! Remember what he would do for You. He would challenge You, he would obey You, and he would follow You. The rabbis describe that there were ten tests with which God tried Abraham, and Abraham passed every single one.

Every year we bring out the Torah and we read about the last and most horrible test, Akeydat Yitzhak, the Binding of Isaac. God places his trust in Abraham that he will do God’s bidding. Abraham places his trust in God that God will keep His promise and provide Abraham with a future to last beyond his lifetime. Every year we read this story, scratch our heads, and marvel at the workings of faith and trust. This Rosh Hashanah, I want instead to focus on Abraham’s first test, which was in some ways his most difficult test. It was most difficult because Abraham then had nothing invested in God, and God had nothing invested in Abraham. Unlike God and the Jewish people today, Abraham and God had no history and no relationship. So when God calls Abraham (he was then known as Avram) and lays out before him this challenge, the wheels for the relationship between God and the Jewish people and between God and the world start rolling.

And God said to Avram, “Lekh-Lekha, go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation. And I will bless you. I will make your name great. And you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and those who curse you I will curse. And all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you.” Avram went forth as Adonai had commanded him, and Lot went with him. Avram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. Avram took his wife Sarai, and his brother’s son Lot, and all the wealth that they had amassed, and the persons that they had acquired in Haran: and they set out for the land of Canaan.

Lekh-Lekha—Go forth, was Avram’s first and greatest spiritual challenge. He was commanded to go forth, to head out, to make a radical change in his life and the way he had lived for 75 years. Lekh-lekha means that the status quo is no longer sufficient. These two words, Lekh-lekha, is the shorthand for God’s command, “Avram, the way you have been doing things all these years no longer works well for you or for the world. We must try something new, something radically different, something that will capture the imagination of the world and all those who come into contact with you. You are comfortable here, I know. But now is the time to leave your comfort zone, to move out to a foreign land. Take your possessions with you. I will lead the way. But Avram, I cannot lead the way unless you first are willing to make the change. I need you, and you need me, so let’s saddle up and get going.”

“Where are we going?” Avram undoubtedly asked. And God, ever the riddle master, responded, “To a land that I will show you.” “And what should I pack?” “Take everything that you own, because once you leave, you will not come back.”

This dialogue conjures up images of Jews throughout history: those Israelites who went to Egypt in search of food, and those who fled Egypt in search of the Promised Land; those Judeans carried off as slaves to the far reaches of the ancient empires of Babylonia, Persia, Greece and Rome; and those Jews who were driven from their homes in Europe and Africa and the Middle East; those Jews tortured by anti-Semitism, by Nazism or by communism, and those Jews motivated for a better and freer life who came to the shores of the United States of America and the Jewish State of Israel. It is all lekh-lekha; it is all going out and going forward to the land of the unknown. Our roadmap will unfold through faith and through searching for God together.

This dialogue also conjures up the tragic images of the evacuees from the city of New Orleans. Quickly, they had to leave their homes and their businesses and their schools and their way of life. Many of our fellow Americans will not go back to their beloved city. We have some people from New Orleans who are here with us today. These New Orleans’ Jews conjure up a striking image for us. These are Jews who have had their historic roots uprooted. This Rosh Hashanah--5766, there are rabbis without congregations, congregants without their rabbis, beautiful buildings standing empty and Torahs unread. We Jews have never before had such a dislocation on American soil. We will need to help these rabbis return to their congregations. We will need to help these congregants resettle or return to New Orleans if they wish. We will need to help rebuild the buildings and reclaim the Torah scrolls. The sound of the shofar will not be heard in New Orleans this Rosh Hashanah. But with the help of God and with our prayers and effort, next Rosh Hashanah will be different.

As I thought of the Jewish community of New Orleans, I tried to picture me and picture you in their shoes. We experienced Hurricane Ivan last Rosh Hashanah, which was difficult enough. Imagine the pain and dislocation we would experience if we had to lekh-lekha, if Temple Emanu-El had ceased to function, if our precious community would be scattered to the winds, if we would lose touch with each other, lose touch with our children in the religious school and lose touch with our older members who have sustained this synagogue with love and devotion, lose touch with our cemeteries and lose touch with the lovely children in our Temple Tots, to no longer hear the voice of our Cantor and the beautiful music in our magnificent synagogue, to no longer carry the Torahs in our ark down the aisles of the congregation, to never again have a chuppah on this bima—imagine what our city would lose if there were no more Jews here, if we would no longer be here to care for the symphony and the Levite Jewish Community Center and the Art Museum and the NE Miles Jewish Day School, and Greater Birmingham Ministries and the Collat Jewish Family Services and the Interfaith Hospitality House and the health clinic in Sumiton and Birmingham Aids Outreach and the NCCJ and the YWCA and the hospitals and the United Way. How much poorer would we be as individuals and as a community if Temple Emanu-El would have to shut its doors--and the Jews and Jewish values would disappear from our community!

Imagine if we were like our brothers and sisters in New Orleans, and imagine if we were like our ancestors Abraham and Sarah. You must go now, and you can only take with you that which is most important. Where are we going? I don’t know, but God will get us there. What will be the reward? Someday, perhaps far in the future, our name will be great and we will be a blessing to all who will bless us.

What did Avram and Sarai take with them? They took their possessions, they took their faith, they took their hope and they took the souls that they had made in Haran. What exactly does that mean, the souls that they had made in Haran? Avram and Sarai waited an agonizing 25 years to bear a child, Isaac, which was itself nothing short of a miracle. Abraham would be 100 and Sarah 90 when baby Isaac would breathe his first breath. So who were the souls that Abraham and Sarah made when they first set out from Haran to the Promised Land?

Avram and Sarai spent their lives soul-making. They are the founders of the Jewish people and the founders of monotheism because they breathed the soul of God into the world about them. Everywhere they went, Abraham and Sarah were considered to be people of high stature. People looked up to them as an example of upright living. They were hospitable. They put themselves out for others. They were not concerned for their wealth, but instead strove for peace and justice. Abraham and Sarah were soul makers, and without their pioneering effort, there would be no God in this world, no civilization, no justice, and no mercy. Without Abraham and Sarah doing God’s work, the world today would have no Sabbath. Without Abraham and Sarah doing God’s work, the poor today would have no rights. Without Abraham and Sarah, the world today would be God deprived, and we would live our lives today without God’s guidance, without God’s providence, without meaning and without hope.

But exactly what does the Torah mean when it says that Abraham and Sarah made souls? The great commentator, Rashi, explained that Abraham would convert the men and Sarah would convert the women. It makes me chuckle to think that, so long ago, Rashi taught that Sarah would take the women to the mikveh, the ritual bath, where they would immerse in the living waters and emerge as Jews. And Abraham would do the same for the men, after they were circumcised of course. And these souls were counted by our tradition as the children of Abraham and Sarah, as though they were biologically theirs.

But Rashi knew what he was talking about. Even though there was no mikveh back then, and even though Abraham was himself still then uncircumcised, Rashi was teaching us an important lesson. Judaism is about soul making. Judaism is about the bringing of God to the soul of men and women. Judaism is about infusing the soul of history with the morality of our faith. Judaism is about affirming the dignity of every human being as reflecting the image of God because we have a common soul. We Jews are in the soul making business.

That is the message I want to share with you on this New Year. I want us to reaffirm the soul making primacy of Jewish life, which began with Abraham and Sarah. That is our primary task at Temple Emanu-El, and everything that we do should reflect this ancient and holy mission. When we teach our children in our religious school or our Temple Tots, we are making souls. When we hand our children the Torah at their Bar Mitzvah or their Bibles at Confirmation, we are making souls. When we head up to Sumiton, or raise money and open our hands to help people rebuild lives after Hurricane Katrina, we are making souls. When we tend to our people in physical pain, when we bury our dead, or stand with bride and groom, or pass the Torah from one generation to the next, we are making souls. Soul making is our business.

This September, we taught eighty people from our community in our Curious About Judaism? program. Very few of these people were Jews. I received comments from some of you, and I know this program generated some discussion when the articles and the advertisements appeared in the newspapers. “Just what are they doing over there? We don’t proselytize. We don’t seek out converts. That is what they do, the Christians, to us. And we, we take pride that we can be faithful without being arrogant, that we can be faithful without being demeaning of others, and that we can be faithful without wearing our faith on our sleeve.”

Our goal is not to proselytize. A few of the eighty may formally adopt Judaism as their faith, but a large majority will not. But they can as good Christians or as otherwise God fearing people carry forward the soul force of Judaism. We want to infuse our world with Jewish values. We want our Judaism, like the Judaism of Abraham and Sarah, to impact our world and make it more holy. We are agents to bring God into the world. My friends, we are not the only agents to bring God into the world. There are other people from other religions who are faithful and caring and giving. They are also a blessing to God and to our fellow human beings. They are also doing God’s work. And they are also fulfilling the charge of soul making which God had first charged our ancestors, Abraham and Sarah.

I hope this year that there will be many new people in our building. I hope that we will have many who are curious about Judaism, some from New Orleans, some from other places who are new to Birmingham or new to the Temple. So when you see people in our building whom you do not recognize, turn to them and say, Shalom! Welcome them with your kindness and warmth. Don’t worry about embarrassing yourselves or not recognizing someone that perhaps you should know. Say “Hello”, say, “Welcome”, say, “Can I get to know you?” Reach out to those who are strangers to you. Provide them with acknowledgment and with comfort. When you do, you are like Abraham and Sarah, soul makers, and the Jewish people are a blessing to the world. Live your faith so others can see it—so that others will know it. Our faith is more than our private business; it is the mission that Abraham and Sarah first undertook. Be soul makers, and you will be a blessing to God. And as we bring our soul force to the world, we re-ensoul our congregation and ourselves as we move towards the future.

I want to share a story with you from perhaps a long time ago, or perhaps from today’s time, or perhaps this is a story meant for tomorrow:

After the destruction, a certain Yitzhak walked aimlessly among the ruins. He had lost everything and everyone. All alone, he was contemplating taking his own life. And then he spotted an empty merchant’s booth with some crazy Jew sitting by himself.

“What are you doing here?” asked Yitzhak.

“I have wares to sell.”

“I have no money,” said Yitzhak.

“You don’t need any money. I will sell you what I have for nothing if you want it.”

“But I see nothing here to buy,” protested Yitzchak.

And the Jew behind the booth said, “I sell faith. I sell hope; I sell meaning; I sell comfort; and I sell all these things, for nothing.”

My friends, God has given us another year to sell our wares to the world. We have been tried by history, yet we still sit behind our booth and offer our faith. No matter the destruction, we do not give up on God, on the world or on the future. Even if we lose a battle here or there, we do not surrender because like Abraham and Sarah before us, we have some soul making to do. With this New Year, let’s lekh-lekha, go forth to the land that God will show us, and let’s all bring some soul force to the world.

Amen