Temple Emanu-El

Sermon Parashat Shmini/Yom HaShoah
Rabbi Jonathan Miller
Temple Emanu-El
Birmingham, Alabama
April 13, 2007/26 Nisan, 5767

This is a Joseph Telushkin weekend here at Temple Emanu-El. That means that the sermon-giver is "contractually bound" to speak about our Temple's adopted study book written by Rabbi Telushkin, A Code of Jewish Ethics, You Shall Be Holy. I was assigned by the powers that are to speak about Chapter IV, which is entitled, "Acting as Ambassadors of God".
The Hebrew term is Kiddush Hashem, to sanctify the name of God. Its opposite is Chilul Hashem, to debase God's name. Essentially, we Jews are meant to be God's ambassadors to the world. This concept aligns too with Reform Judaism' scriptural mandate: "I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness, and have taken you by the hand and kept you. I have made thee a covenant of the people, a light unto the nations."
This is not the invention of some universalist Reform Jew who taught Rabbi Newfield, of blessed memory, at the Hebrew Union College a hundred and twenty years ago. This comes straight from the Prophet Isaiah. Be a covenant people and a light unto the nations--We are meant in all of our activities, to sanctify God's name.

How do we do this? This awareness is carried down throughout the generations, from parent to child. I was somewhat of a wild kid. I know of no successful rabbi, or preacher for that matter, that did not have a wild streak someplace that needed to be tamed. My parents would drum into me, "Jonny, you represent the Miller family wherever you go. Don't embarrass us by your actions. Make us proud that you are a Miller."
That is the principle of Kiddush Hashem, the sanctification of God's name. As I grew up in a largely non-Jewish world, I came to the realization, especially as a rabbi's son, that I, whether I liked it or not, represented the Jewish people in all of my dealings. My non-Jewish peers would look at me and extrapolate that all Jews were like me. And so I felt compelled to behave a little better than I otherwise would.

And as an adult, I have come to realize, that I--and you--represent not only the Jewish community of Birmingham, but we also represent our covenant with God, our dedication to Torah and its values, and our passion to better the world. Going back to the Prophet Isaiah and even earlier to our experience at Sinai, we Jews are the ones to bring God and to bring Torah to the world. We are the ones to pursue justice, to embrace mercy, and to show the world how to walk humbly with God. We are God's moral and religious exemplars. We are M'kad'dshei HaShem, the sanctifiers of God's name, the bringers of holiness and righteousness, not by our pronouncements and not by our proclamations, but by our actions. Would God look to us and say that He is proud of us, that our deeds reflect Torah and justice and mercy and honesty and integrity and kindness and humility? Do we live in that way? Or are we instead boastful and arrogant and greedy and abusive and belligerent and aggressive and nasty? If we live as God wants us to live, we are sanctifiers of God's name, and if we do not, than we are the opposite: M'challelei HaShem, those who desecrate the Holy name.

Those who know Hebrew know that when we speak of the sanctification of God's name, Kiddush HaShem, we are not only talking about those who are religious exemplars, but we are also referring to those who endure suffering and death because they are Jews. To die because one is a Jew, whether in the time of the Romans, or the Crusaders, or the Inquisitors, or the pogromchiks, or the Nazis, or the Islamic anti-Semites today, that person is a martyr and has died "Al Kiddush HaShem", for the sanctification of God's name.
That in itself is an unusual term for someone who has died under the most adverse of circumstances simply because he or she was associated with the Jewish people. How can these tragic deaths be considered, "Al Kiddush haShem-for the sanctification of the Divine name?" It might indeed be more appropriate to label these martyrs in exactly the opposite fashion.
They are M'chal'lei HaShem, the ones whose death and suffering desecrate the Divine name

Do not the deaths of the innocent and the sweet and the just diminish God's name? Does not the suffering of innocent people bear witness to a God that can no longer protect the righteous or reward the just? The unrequited death of innocents everywhere is an affront to our God who seemingly cannot save, or if this God can indeed save but chooses not to, is a God who does not save and permits the innocent to be overcome by the wicked; who permits the gentle to be harmed by the brutal, who looks aside as His chosen people are chosen by others to suffer and to be brought low and to disappear from the face of the earth. The suffering of our people as we remember our martyrs would appear to be a M'chalel HaShem, a desecration of God's holy name, and not a sanctification of it. It would appear that we have it all wrong.

Saturday evening is Yom haShoah. If you have obtained the yellow candles from our Temple Brotherhood, light them Saturday night as the sun sets in remembrance of our six million brothers and sisters who were massacred by the demonic who attempted to extinguish God's presence in the world. The perpetrators of this slaughter were God defying pagans. God chooses life.
They relished in death. God chooses justice. They whimsically pointed the driven some to the left and some to the right, some to the barracks and some to the gas chambers. God chooses mercy. They reveled in cruelty. They starved human beings, performed gruesome experiments on their bodies, took away their names and made them numbers, drained their bodies of vitality and their souls of hope. God grants us free will, and freely they set out to destroy that which God loves and nurtures, us, the people of Israel, the covenanted people, the light unto the nations.
Perhaps this was not Kiddush HaShem, the sanctification of God's name. These deaths were in some good measure a momentous desecration, a base defilement of that which is holy.

There is a bit of a controversy in the world about when to commemorate the horrors of the Shoah, whether it should be on the 27th of the Hebrew month of Nisan, or on the 27th day of January. The world at large commemorates the Shoah on January 27th, the anniversary of the day in 1945 that Auschwitz was liberated. It is duly noted by the nations of the world that the greatest place of evil that the world has ever witnessed was finally closed down by the soon to be victorious Allied armies. The United Nations observes January 27th as the date to remember. But we Jews cling to the 27th of Nisan. In 1950, the government of Israel chose the 27th of Nisan because it fell during the middle of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943. Its original name was called Yom HaShoah U'Mered HaGetaot, Holocaust Remembrance and Ghetto Revolt Day. Later, its name was shortened to Yom HaShoah v'Hagvurah, Holocaust Remembrance and Courage Day.

Yom HaShoah v'Hagvurah is not just a day to remember the Holocaust, but also a day to remember the courage of the Jewish people. We remember not just those who shut down the camps (even as they flew over them for years and never bothered to drop a wayward bomb on the death factories) on their march to victory over this evil. But we especially remember our brothers and sisters who rose up when their cause was hopeless.
Yom HaShoah v'Hagvurah-Holocuast Remembrance and Courage Day.

We especially remember the courage of those who withstood the attempts of those who wielded their power of life and death to make them less than human.
We especially remember the courage those who fought to their certain death against the powerful Wehrmacht.
We especially remember the courage of those who died with a certainty that even though they suffered, that God had not abandoned them. We especially remember the courage of those who refused to give up the belief that Elijah would one day come, that the Messiah would usher into this tortured world an era when all would be alright forever and ever. We especially remember the courage of those who survived the camps and the forests and the cellars and fought not to go mad. We especially remember the courage of those who rebuilt their lives and their faith, who grew up, who married, who had children, who recreated from the ashes of destruction lives that knew again joy and love and happiness; the courage of those who refused to be bitter, who would not be bitter, and who would not
tarnish their souls with hatred. Tomorrow night
begins Yom HaShoah v'Hagvurah, Holocaust Remembrance and Courage Day. Don't forget the courage. Don't forget the courage. Don't forget the courage.

My friends, it is not the death of the innocent that is Kiddush HaShem, the sanctification of God's name.
Rather, it is the courage of those who survive them.
The sanctification of God's name is the courage of those who have seen the holocaust and have kept moving, those who have withstood the destruction, and those who have survived by holding on to life with their fingernails, longer and with greater devotion than anyone could ever imagine possible. Kiddush HaShem, the sanctification of God's name is not the death of the innocents, but the determination of the community, the people and the world to affirm life and love and to affirm God even after the holocaust of destruction. They died then. We sanctify their lives, and we sanctify God's name by our lives and the way we live.

In this week's Torah portion, Shimini, Aaron's elder sons Nadav and Avihu wore their priestly garments and brought forward a foreign fire to the Lord, one that God had not assigned to them. The fire lept out of their fire pain and consumed them. They, who were trained to offer the burnt offering had become an offering themselves. Aaron, the boys' father, looked on with horror. But Aaron had a job to do. He was
the Kohen HaGadol, the high priest He put on his
breeches and his tunic and his ephod and his breastpiece and his crown that said, Kodesh l'Adonai, Holy unto God. And he went back to the people to serve them as their priest, l'kaddeish haShem, to Sanctify God's name. And the people of Israel made their way forward towards the Promised Land as a covenant to the people and as a light unto the nations.

That is what they did. And that is what we do.

Shabbat Shalom

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