For my first of three sermons this year, I figured I’d get right to it. The state of the world today. Humanity’s role in a broken cosmos. We’ve got about 10 minutes. Let’s figure this out.
In all seriousness, what role does Judaism and religion play if not as something of a torch from our ancestors handed to us to grasp our way through the cosmic darkness?
What other topic is there to discuss ever in a sermon than wondering what wisdom is offered to us by our tradition to help us make sense of this life here on earth. Sure, we can focus on different manifestations of that uncertainty: depression, anxiety, racism, antisemitism, joy, wonder, bewilderment, love. But ultimately the question is the same: how do we make sense of our experience of the universe as human beings, what insight do generations of Torah and Jewish wisdom lend to this quest for meaning, and what instruction or direction might that sense of meaning lead us toward?
The word, Torah, after all, comes from the word for instruction. What pathway does our Torah—and I’m defining Torah not simply as the Five Books of Moses, Genesis through, Deuteronomy, though certainly flowing from that sacred text; but rather Torah in the sense of Etz Chayim, tree of life. Torah as the ever-growing, life-filled document comprised of generations of conversations among Jews and their loved ones making sense of this cosmos before us. So what direction, what guidance, what pathway might this ever-blossoming torah reveal to us when confronted with our present situation.
Well, first, let’s make sure we’re clear on our present situation. I needn’t tell you, though I’ll review it, in brief. I am speaking to you through a screen, beaming through ethernet cables, and wireless fidelity, over dozens, hundreds, perhaps even thousands of miles I’m doing this because a deadly pandemic continues to rage around the globe, homing in like a heat seeking missile on the vulnerable, the elderly, the sick at heart and of body, and disparately impacting already burdened racial groups.
Speaking of race, 2020 is a year where centuries of racist oppression against Black People, Indigenous People, and all People of Color has in many ways revealed itself with new force, the cruel 8 minutes and 46 seconds in which a man was killed broadcast around the world for all to see, an 8 minutes and 46 seconds I still haven’t been able to bring myself to watch. A pandemic and our quarantining focusing our attention on this plight like perhaps never before.
Antisemitism continues to rear its head with images and quotations being shared we thought, we hoped, I hoped, were relics of our past, something out of a museum, not something that is a lived reality, and yet something that remains a persistent force in our communities.
A climate of hate towards the other, other skin color, other religion, other political ideology, has been signaled to be acceptable if not outright desirable, by those at the very top of our political power structure. There has been an abdication of leadership on matters of governance and public health and an embracing of demagoguery, fear-mongering, and race-baiting. While there have perhaps been other periods in some of our lifetimes that have seen this level of public disruption and uncertainty, I think it’s safe to say that for many, if not all of us, these are truly unprecedented times.
So the question before us, what now? How do we respond? What does Torah, the ever-flowing body of Jewish wisdom, offer to us in these challenging times
I think, to answer that question, we’re going to have to go all the way back to the creation of the universe, and even before. Not simply to let there be light though certainly that is part of the story, but through a deeper understanding of how we came to be, as generated through Jewish wisdom over the millenia. It goes like this:
At the beginning of time, before time, the divine presence filled the universe. There was nothing else. God, Adonai, the Ein, Sof, that which has no end, inhabited all of existence and beyond. There was just… the infinite. All was perfect.
And yet there was no differentiation, no distinction, just existence. To make room for creation, what was there to do? God had no choice but to withdraw. To make room for creation God first drew in God’s breath, inhaled, contracting God’s self. From that contraction, from that withdrawal, an empty mass was produced, for how could there be anything else without the presence of the divine?
So in order to effect creation, in order to create the universe, God said, Vayehi or, “Let there be light.”
But, soas not to overwhelm the space in which God was creating, God encased this light into vessels, casks. God sent forth these vessels towards the empty mass, like a fleet of ships, each carrying its cargo of light.
And when these vessels arrived at their destination, the space of creation… they shattered. And creation was effected through the resulting combination of ingredients, shard of vessel, spark of light, shard of vessel, spark of light. Sparks of Light were scattered throughout the newly created universe, like sand, like seeds, like stars, covered by shards of vessels.
This is the universe we now know today—eons later, sparks of light hidden in broken shards.
As the teaching goes, this is why humanity was created. To gather the sparks no matter where they are hidden. No matter how dark a place, no matter how heavy a condition. In fact, as a certain Jewish teaching offers, the more profound the darkness, the emptiness, the heaviness, the brighter, the more holy the spark that lies within one’s grasp to redeem.
Now, I want to tread carefully here, because in this understanding of the universe’s experience there is a danger of glorifying suffering, of perhaps even inviting it, or, worse, shrugging off the suffering of others as a means of raising the sparks. That is not what this teaching is meant to offer
Instead it demonstrates, there is a strain of Jewish thinking that recognizes the inherent brokenness in the universe, and our task is helping to repair it through our discovering, and lifting up, the sparks.
As the story continues, when enough sparks have been gathered, the vessels will be restored, and the repair of the world, awaited so long, will be effected. Therefore, the story continues, it should be the aim of everyone to raise the sparks from wherever these are imprisoned, and to elevate them to holiness by the power of each individual soul.
In fact there are a series of sparks dispersed throughout the universe designated exclusively for each of us; only we can redeem those sparks, lift those sparks, and effect the healing the world is in need of.
These are situated in the conditions with which we are confronted: pandemic, sick children or sick parents, depressed spouse, anxious self—each of these are corners of the universe in which a spark is buried, and it is our duty, our mitzvah, our calling to redeem them.
So how do we raise the sparks, what does this mean as applied to our circumstances here on earth?
A traditional understanding focuses on the observance of mitzvot, that contained within Torah are planted the seeds to eternity, if we would but turn the words over and over, reflecting on them, carrying them out, that would be an effectuation of the raising of the sparks.
A version of this I remember hearing from my father was that if all Jewish people would but observe Shabbat for one week, together, that would have the effect of raising all the sparks. The moshiach, the messiah would come, and the world would be redeemed, with peace and harmony prevailing.
“That doesn’t sound that hard to at least try out,” I said. “Couldn’t we just all plan for one week and try it out and see what happens?” It was a problem of coordination, my dad explained. Too hard to get all Jews on the same page for one week. Maybe if he had lived to see Zoom, he might have had a different thought.
In reality, I imagine this teaching around raising the sparks as offering something slightly different.
It offers us a task in the midst of all this suffering, of all these challenges. It says that when confronted with depression, with challenge, there, too, perhaps there especially, there is an opportunity to effect change, to achieve greater enlightenment, to achieve atonement, which is really, at-one-ment.
How does it do this, how does such calamity offer us this opportunity?
For starters it invites us to look beyond ourselves. Each of us in this zoom room is fortunate, and each of in this zoom room experiences some degree of tragedy.
I wake up each morning, and I get to go downstairs to experience love with who I’m going to argue is the most adorable one year old in the history of the planet, with all due deference to your respective loved ones.
When I get to her crib, her first instinct is to reach around on her mattress to find whichever stuffed animal is most accessible—usually, it’s a rabbit or a penguin—and to hand it over to me. At first I thought it was because she wanted me to have it make voices, to start to entertain her.
But it’s not. It’s just to give. To establish a point of connection as a means for us human beings, father and daughter, to relate to one another. I say thank you, the point of connection is sparked, and our day can begin.
When I pause to recognize that moment, to let the divinity inherent in that moment in: I believe, spark lifted. When I manage to let in the godliness that is a regular moment with my daughter, rather than to immediately pivot to scrolling mindlessly through my phone, or worrying about what emails I haven’t gotten to yet, or whether I’ve worked enough on my sermon, I believe, spark lifted.
That is one of my tasks on this earth right now. To facilitate the connections between my daughter and me that this period of quarantine has invited, to make sure she feels truly seen and loved for who she is; rather than to spurn those moments focusing always on the self or on my work. That’s not necessarily your task, but that’s my task.
OK, but I’m getting off pretty easy, aren’t I. My task is to spend time with an adorable one year old and just make sure I don’t take it for granted? Not exactly putting myself through the ringer, am I?
At each and every moment we have a task. I have to confront the more challenging features of my life as well. My family—my mother, my two sisters, my sister’s family—live three thousand miles away from me in Portland, Oregon, not far from where fires are raging, all within a few blocks of each other. Most of them have met my daughter once in the year she’s been alive, separated as we are by a continent, a pandemic, and frankly, an emotional chasm that would persist even if the other two gaps subsided.
We communicate, it’s not radio silence. I love them deeply. But a lifetime rocked by childhood trauma led to the instinct among some of us, probably most notably me, to keep ourselves at a distance, physical, emotional, spiritual. To avoid rather than to engage.
Where are the sparks in this? Part of it is the grief. It’s hard to move on to the next chapter of a relationship if you haven’t mourned the loss of the first. For all the talking I have done over the years, for all the sharing I’ve done with this congregation about my childhood biography, facts are not feelings; a recitation of events is different than an experience of them. A distancing mechanism that helped get me through a tumultuous time is now in effect long beyond it. To experience the grief in order to move on is an invitation to lift the sparks. These sparks are present in each situation.
Moving beyond the world of my family, the world around us presents itself with opportunities to lift the sparks.
One of the most over-cited phrases in Jewish tradition is tzedek, tzedek tirdof. Justice, justice shall you pursue. And yet, there is a reason it attracts so much attention. The phrase is uttered by Moses in the final weeks of his life as he stands on the precipice of the promised land, knowing he will not join his fellow Israelites, but sending them off with final exhortations.
Those three words say so much: tzedek, tzedek. The same word, justice repeated twice, signaling to us its importance. For there was no underlining in Torah, no use of bold, or italics. To signal something’s urgency, one said it twice.
And then the word, tirdof, pursue. Not honor or respect or cherish justice but pursue it. Go after it. Seize it. Be relentless in attaining it. An active responsibility, not merely a passive concern.
Raising the sparks in the world around us requires us to be vigilant and proactive, not merely take what comes our way. It means getting up in the morning and reading the news not merely to decry, to lambast; but to engage, like a metal detector, to seek out what needs our attention, what cries out to us. Where is there a spark in our world that needs lifting? This is not to imagine ourselves as saviors, but simply to make sure we are attuning ourselves to that divine call for support and connection.
We don’t have to look very far. It can be easy to be laser focused on the White House; the race for it is certainly what attracts the most attention. And I don’t want to undersell its importance. It is yet again the most important election of our lifetime. But regardless of its outcome there are sparks that are crying out to be lifted right here. Right here in Philadelphia where we can each make a big impact.
Life expectancy is an important measure of how healthy we are as a community. Out of the 25 biggest cities in the country, here in Philadelphia we rank… 24th. Infant mortality is another key metric, measuring the health care we’re able to provide to mothers up and down the income spectrum. Here, in a recent ranking of the ten biggest cities in the country we ranked… tenth. 8.3 deaths per one thousand births, 43% higher than the national average.
And of course, there is the poverty rate. A full 25%, one quarter of our population, lives in poverty, worst of all big cities in the United States by a large margin. 34%, more than one out of three children, children live in poverty here in Philadelphia. Little Lila’s. Caroline and I think about that sometimes, when we’re in her gorgeous room, gushing over her, as she coos comfortably. Or whines, whatever the case may be. But we think about that, we think about the other children under so much more strain, financial strain, resource strain, health strain. Racial strain.
Racial strain. We know a disproportionate burden of the heaviness of thse metrics falls on Black people. When we talk about systemic racism or structural racism, this is what we talk about. We wonder, would we as a society countenance the status quo if it was one out of four white families in poverty? One out of three white children in poverty? One out of three young white men locked up in small cells? I’m not sure we would. Not necessarily because of intentional racial animus, but because of centuries of signals that have seeped into our consciousness about what is tolerable and what isn’t. Part of the reason the phrase black lives matter came to such prominence is because, with statistics like these, it’s worth wondering, are we as a society treating black people like their lives do matter.
When we engage these questions, when we let them into our hearts, I would argue, that begins the process of lifting sparks. It doesn’t complete it, but it starts it. When our actions flow from our engagement, our daily choices, when we plant seeds within our own souls, seeds of compassion towards the other, by recognizing that each of us is created in the image of the divine, each of us, when we water those seeds by continuing to engage, engaging in local politics, making sure meaningful resources are invested in the communities that need them, volunteering our time and our money, substantial amounts of our money, not a token amounts, when we vigilantly take on the task of being our brother’s keeper, our sister’s keeper, our sibling’s keeper, I believe, sparks begin to lift.
We know this isn’t the only area crying out to us that human hands are needed to help lift up the sparks. A pandemic rages, refugees are still trying to get here to build a better life for themselves, the planet needs tending to, and antisemitism continues to rear its head once again. A centuries-old hatred remains pungent. Remaining vigilant, tzedek tirdof, means letting in the pain of others, having it affect us. It means being sensitive to our own pain, discerning when it needs tending to and when it gets in the way of our ability to hear others. Staying true to this task, I believe, can help facilitate the lifting of sparks.
It can all seem pretty overwhelming. Between the world swirling around us, quarantined in our homes, worried about the outcome of the next election and the fate of our Democracy; our own home lives often enduring more turmoil and stress than those around us realize; our own souls experiencing more distress than we’re sometimes willing to admit. What does it all mean, how do we endure?
Judaism, Jewish wisdom, Torah suggests that it is precisely these moments that present us with sparks to uplift. As Rabbi Alan Lew teaches, “our suffering, the unresolved element of our lives, is also from God. It is the instrument by which we are carried back to God, not something to be defended against, but rather to be embraced.”
I have often found it that the darkest, heaviest moments in my life can be the ones capable of producing the most light, of elevating the brightest spark. When I’ve reached certain points of existential grief, that’s when I’ve been able discern the presence of the divine most profoundly. Not in the sense that God is testing me or that God never gives me more than what I can handle. But in the sense that that experience of emptiness of heaviness, in some ways allows me to strip away the distractions and see through to the core of what underlies this universe: divinity. Not divinity that says, don’t worry I’ll take care of everything for you, I’ll make you prosperous, I’ll make life a breeze. But rather divinity that says, don’t worry I am here behind you, to lean on, to draw strength from, to provide inspiration for your own work to make Me whole again. To take the shattered vessels that comprise the universe and put them back together piece by piece, thereby raising the sparks effecting redemption.
