What am I doing here?

I mean, here I am a man who has no belief in a personal God participating in a Yom Kippur service where we are confessing our misdeeds to God and throwing ourselves at Her or His mercy. At least that's the traditional understanding even if Kehilla treats this a bit more metaphorically.

And soon we will do our confession and then enter a retelling of the Yom Kippur ritual of the High Priest as it was done in the days when the Temple stood in Jerusalem. At the end of that section of the service, we prostrate ourselves on the floor in the same way that the High Priest did in total surrender to the will of God.

So I ask again: What the hell am I doing here? If there's no traditional God out there to whom I am surrendering, then what am I doing? And on some other level I am deeply suspicious of the process of resigning myself to any other will, be it human or divine. Nevertheless I do surrender and I do bow down.

So the Kehilla Transitional Spiritual Leadership Committee decided that if a rank non-believer like me had reasons to join in an act of holy surrender, then kal va-chomehr (how much more so it would be true) for someone who actually defined their belief as a belief in God. So I'll explain.

But first a word about my theology. I do not think that there is a right or wrong way to think about or define God. I don't even think it is necessary to be consistent in one's beliefs either. I think I'm quite traditionally Jewish in this regard, that is, primarily I am concerned about your actions. Secondarily, Judaism is also concerned whether you are conferring the role of God onto anyone or anything that is not God.

What do I mean by this? Let me explain by way of a story. In the early 1930's, Erich Fromm, the Marxist psychologist and writer was asked by the Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig to teach an adult class on the Torah. Fromm exclaimed to Rosenzweig, "But I am a Marxist and a psychologist, I don't know anything about the Bible or religion!" Rosenzweig said, "That's great, you'll be perfect." So Fromm studied Genesis and Exodus carefully and came out with a startling revelation, which was that the Torah spent almost no time demanding that one is to believe in God, but does spend a lot of time insisting that one must not worship idols. For Fromm, the affirmative non-belief in idols was almost the very definition of the belief in YHWH. In his book, You Shall Be As Gods, Fromm said that his problem with much of western religion was that it had become the worship of an idol called "God." Judith Plaskow, the feminist theologian has said something very much parallel to Fromm and she has coined a useful term. She uses the word "monolatry" to describe the belief in one idol, superior, transcendant and exclusive. The Bible itself has a wonderful story where God tries to warn against monolatry. It's the story of the burning bush during which Moses confronts God with a question demanding that God define Godself and say who or what God is. But God answers in wry, almost humorous, fashion and totally parries the question. God says the most elusive theological statement in religious history: "Eh'yeh asher eh'yeh" usually translated as "I am that I am." But it doesn't mean that. The Hebrew verb is in the imperfect tense. So just skipping over the grammar lesson, suffice it to say the sentence is almost impossible to translate literally, so I'll just translate its connotation. It means: "I am becoming whatever I am becoming." And then God implies that the divine name which is spelled Yod Hey Vav Hey means "Am becoming." In short, the author of the story of the burning bush will not allow Moses to pin God down as an entity or as a thing, but rather as a process. And not even a completed process, but one which is on-going.

All this aside, Judaism still doesn't demand that you believe X or Y about God, it only asks, as Fromm pointed out, that you are not to worship idols, that you do not treat something as if it were your God when it is no God. You cannot idolize a human, you cannot idolize money, you cannot idolize the Lubavitcher Rebbe, you cannot idolize Jerry Garcia (you see, this can get tough), you cannot idolize a way of thinking. And also you cannot idolize your definition of yourself. For if even God will not pin Godself down to a static definition, then kal va-chomehr (how much more so is this true) us mortals. I may not believe in a personal God, but I will at least try to imitate Her example on this point.

So now you know that I am not bowing down to a guy in the sky. I am bowing down to a process. This entire universe is an ever-changing process of becoming and evolving. And during this process, which is all of time and space, for one brief moment a human species gets to exist and be conscious thus enabling the universe to see and consider itself. I personally am just a momentary flurry of process that has appeared temporarily and will soon return to the elements. When I actually face this truth and feel it, and not just hear it as a bunch of words, it can be very scary. In Douglas Adams comic science fiction, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, there is a special torture chamber called the Total Perspective Vortex that does its work merely by fully exposing the victim to his or her actual insignificance in the cosmic scheme of reality.

But ultimately, even if I couldn't bear what I would see in the Total Perspective Vortex, I act as if I had significance. And even if the world were absurd, as I believe it is, I still project upon it a purpose for my living. The problem is how do I do so without idol-worshipping those purposes which I myself have created? Well for one thing, I use the High Holydays as a time to remind myself that all my self-definition is subject to reexamination. And if I fail to remind myself on the High Holydays, then reality does not let me get too cocksure of myself. Reality, either through tragedy or comedy, pulls the rug right out from under us and changes itself. And here I am left only with the best laid plans of mice and people. And then I must, we all must, figure out what our purpose is in light of the new configuration.

For example, this year I realized that Rabbi Zari was leaving, and that Burt did not want to be a full time rabbi. A completely new configuration for Kehilla and for me too. Perhaps, I thought to myself, I should take advantage of Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi's offer and get ordained by him and apply for the position of Kehilla's rabbi which I've always had some yen to be. I went through two months of careful soul-searching and I came out of it thinking that whether or not I were to be ordained, what I really want to be right now is a father to my children, the owner of a Jewish store, a lover and friend, and someone somehow involved in Tikkun Olam, struggling to make this a better world. And so I decided to participate in the process of helping Kehilla during this period of transition and to help find a new rabbi. Although I ended up doing more work for Kehilla, I pretty much decided to recommit myself to the very life I was already living. My changes were few--this time--but the very reconfiguration made me have to rediscover myself, and for that I'm grateful.

Accepting what cards the universe deals to you is one way we handle the reality of change. But there is also a danger of complacency. If we were to fatalistically accept whatever the world dished out, we could not engage in Tikkun Olam, we could not act as if we were God's partners in creating this world and making it better. And we would not take the risks needed to resist tyranny, nor would we discipline ourselves to act beyond our own or our group's immediate interests.

1998 has been a great anniversary year in the effort to make this a better world. It's the anniversary of several very important events which have shaped our society and our consciousness. 150 years ago a group of women and men signed a Statement of Sentiments in Seneca Falls, New York, beginning what has come to be called the feminist movement. 1848 was also the year that Karl Marx and Frederick Engels produced the earthshaking Communist Manifesto. Whatever you may feel about the socialism, the Manifesto was no blueprint for what became Soviet society. Rather, it was a clarion statement that the vast majority of workers, whether they work on the land, in the factory, in a hospital or in an office must have some democratic means of controlling the political and economic forces which determine their lives. And the Seneca Falls Sentiments stated the most subversive of propositions: that women must have control over their own lives and bodies. The Manifesto spurred the creation of the modern labor movement and the demand for general enfranchisement, and Seneca Falls started the feminist movement. Regardless of any criticisms we have of the Sentiments or the Manifesto, we are the products of what they started, and we are still working on those programs and expanding them.

[SECTION ON ISRAEL'S 50TH OMITTED FOR TIME]

1998 has also been the 30th anniversary of the great upheaval of 1968 when an antiwar, anti-conformist, anti-racist, anti-sexist and anti-imperialist revolt began in earnest. It was a tough and glorious time, and we expected revolutionary results any minute.

These movements have represented the many ways we have endeavored to enfranchise ourselves as Jews, as workers, as women, as people of color, as people with disabilities, as lesbians, gays. These represent the ways we have endeavored to enfranchise all the disenfranchised, the oppressed, the occupied, the exploited. These are the ways we have sought to provide access, to bring down the barriers, to open the doors, and to make more level the playing field. These are the ways we have endeavored to fix the earth and its species broken by human endeavors to master it all. And since 1968, we did help to end the US war against Vietnam, we did make inroads in breaking through age-old sexist barriers, and we've succeeded in shifting the debate on gay issues from whether gays and lesbians should be arrested for who they are, to such issues as whether our same-sex relationships should be given religious and legal sanction. But the vision we had in 1968 has largely not been realized. Our recent high hopes for peace in the middle east have been ground down to almost nothing.

And I ask, if we credit ourselves with our successes, then do we blame our personal shortcomings for all that which we did not achieve? No, it isn't all within our hands. We cannot merely act on our will and make it so. But we must act nevertheless, knowing that there are no guarantees. As it says in Pirke Avot, The Ethics of the Elders: "It is not upon you to complete the task, but neither are you free to desist from it."

Our failures are no indication that our efforts were without value. If you believe in a personal God, then you may say that it is all in Her or His hands. If you do not believe in a personal God, then you may believe that it all is contingent upon the unique configurations of forces. In either case it is incumbent upon us to try our best, and to see it through.

Edward Said, the Palestinian American writer captured this feeling recently in an interview. Said was confronted by a friend who said that after all the years of writing, Said's effect on what he sought to change was nil. The refugees are still refugees. Israel is still expanding. Palestinians are still losing land. And, the PLO is negotiating for scraps. Said, who has been living with cancer, was asked, how does all this leave him feeling? He responded "Disappointed, but I feel a sort of renewed intransigence." ...Renewed intransigence.

[SECTION ON CONCEPT OF SUMUD DELEATED FOR TIME AND FLOW]

So I propose today that the surrender that we do when we prostrate this morning, is not a surrender of our responsibility or a surrender of our empowerment to some higher deity or to some idol. It is a statement that we are resigned to our vision of acting as if we were God's partners, that we submit to this ever-changing, ever-enfolding universe and recognize that each of us individually, and all of us collectively, are one with God and/or are one with this process of which we are both the agents and the subjects of change. And we offer up our lives in sacred covenant to a struggle or an endeavor that will never be completed while we yet live.

When we bow down, we also engage in an act of prayer, an act of petition. And I do not believe in any God up there who hears prayer and answers my prayers after He or She decides to reward me. I put forward my petition because I am in need and I will not deny my need for help by keeping silent. I may not expect a divine response to my petition, but that doesn't mean I don't have a need to ask and to experience myself in the act of asking.

So I'd like to teach you to sing with me a very traditional Yom Kippur song that we have never sung in Kehilla before. I'm hoping it will become part of our liturgy again. It actually is in the Kehilla High Holyday prayerbooks on page 36, the second Hebrew paragraph labeled "Together with Cantor."

V-ani t'filati l'chah Yah/Adonai eyt ratzon,
Elohim, b-rav chas'decha, ah'ney'ni b-eh'met yi'shecha.*

Thank you