Several topics are never supposed to be discussed in mixed company: politics, religion and, the birds and the bees. Add to the list of frowned upon topics, is talking about food to a Jewish crowd around 11:00 a.m. on Yom Kippur morning.
I would never have considered broaching such an obviously touchy subject had I not experienced not one, but two fasts this summer in Jerusalem, whose heat and humidity tops that of Sacramento. Not only was everyone fasting, even the very cool secular looking teenagers, but there were public shiruim, or talks on those days, throughout the city, on the topic of a meaningful fast. I learned that trying to evade the hunger pangs, to sneak food to feel a bit better – unless there is a medical issue, or to go to steal away for a nice long nap was missing the point entirely.
While there are some of us who do not fast for health or personal reasons, the reason behind a fast can still be relevant. Outside the sanctuary are copies of a meditation for those who are not fasting yet wish to experience the restoration and renewal of Yom Kippur. Please feel free to take home a copy.
In the Mishna, our 2nd century writings on how to live a Jewish life, we begin by asking what we are supposed to do on fast days. There are actually seven fasts throughout the year. Only two Yom Kippur and Tisha b’Av, which remembers the destruction of the second Temple in Jerusalem, are viewed as major fasts from sundown to sundown. The other five are minor fasts from sunrise till sundown. The holiest of all the fast days is Yom Kippur.
The Mishna is blunt. We are supposed to ‘isur‘ or afflict ourselves, through 1) not eating or drinking 2) not washing and primping 3) not wearing leather shoes 4) not engaging in our regular work or routine, 5) not engaging in marital relations. It goes so far as to say that should a Jew not observe these, they face communal disdain, called ‘a-nush‘ or even ‘ca-ret’ — excommunication from Heaven above.
For a moment, step aside from immediate 21st century reactions to the seemingly over-the-top punishments for disregarding the mitzvah of a fast. What we have is a strong, very strong statement that calls upon us to exercise restraint. On a fast day, we feel and act very differently than a regular day. By choosing to make different choices in our day, we experience a diminishing of ourselves; in fact, in some ways, we don’t feel at all like our regular self. And of all of the restraints of Yom Kippur, the two that generate the greatest attention are food and drink for without them, our life force dips.
That very experience of emptiness, helps us revive a relationship we often delegate to the bottom of our priority list; our relationship with G-d. By removing food and drink for one day, we take on the truth of our vulnerability. The consequences of not doing so, in the Mishnah, could be understood as telling us “Look. Here is an incredible, communal opportunity to connect with your deepest self. And if you ignore it, you are choosing to be kept at a distance from the best that is in you!”
The point of fasting is to be uncomfortable, even if a few people actually enjoy it. If fasting creates the following symptoms: hunger, light-headedness, drowsiness, spacy-ness, headache, irritability, then you are doing it correctly. These symptoms are temporary, and they teach us that many of the physical and emotional feelings we have aren’t as lasting or as serious as we often imagine – we learn, gam zeh ya-avor, this too shall pass.
By hanging in, letting the sensations come and go, we can then expand into a spiritual openness, a quietude allowing greater insight into one’s soul; or as my beloved friend, Rabbi Margaret Holub says, ‘when you fast on Yom Kippur, you are able to achieve the Nielah nirvana.” End of Quote. Nielah is the name for the last service on Yom Kippur, concluding around 6:00 in the evening. A one day fast for most is not fatal, but rather a brief exposure to the unpopular world of restraint.
I mention restraint because the summer fasts for tragic historical events beginning on the 17th of Tammuz, mid-July as the 9th of Av, called Tisha (meaning 9th) b’Av, are more than what they initially appear to be. Both these fast days concern Jerusalem. First the breaching of the Temple Walls by the Romans, and then three weeks later, the actual destruction of our Temple and murder of our people as well as many other very tragic events that also in consequent years happened on this day.
The reason why we remember these sad days with fasting is because of the unusual way our people have always interpreted historical events.
For most folks, if a war is lost, it is because the other army was bigger and badder and better. End of story. For us, it isn’t so simple. Our defeat is internalized. We ask ourselves what inner conflict, what internal weakness dulled our strength and impaired our ability to ward off the enemy? What was going on spiritually that allowed our resistance to break down?
The Jewish interpretation of what happened on the 17th of Tammuz through the 9th of Av – has less to do with what the Roman army, which was very great to be sure, did to us, but rather what caused our fragility?
The Rabbis say that the “enfeeblement” of our infrastructure permitted defeat and it was due specifically to something called sinat chinam. Sina is hatred and Chinam is senseless. Annoyance at one another turned into rage which turned into demonizing the other. We wore ourselves out with in-fighting, making ourselves vulnerable to whomever wanted to conquer us.
When the national battery got drained we lost our ability to focus. United we could stand and divided we fell hard. In contrast, we look at a few uncanny wins when we’ve been on the same page, when kinship was strong.
Think David and Goliath – big old Goliath, little shepherd David, stepping up to protect his people out of intense kinship. Despite the obvious contrast in size, little shepherd David triumphed over the giant with a single stone. Think 1967, Six Day War, Israel surrounded by countries intent on pushing her into the Sea, Israel was together as on people, she did the miraculous and won. Think Entebbe and the penetrating rescue of kidnapped Jews at the Ugandan airport. With that single focus of unity, not weakened by rancor, highest goals are achieved.
From the 2nd century we remember the destructive power of sinat chinam, senseless hatred. The second day of Passover until Shavuot we count the omer and it is traditionally prohibited to get married, go to a musical concert or even get a haircut during those 49 days with the exception of the 33rd day, called Lag B’Omer. Why?
Rabbi Akiva, the great rabbi of the 2nd century, whose grave we visited in Tiberius, had 24000 followers. Rabbi Akiva is famous for the saying: L’avta k’ray-ach ka-mocha, zeh klal ha-Torah – Love your neighbor as you love yourself, that is the most important point in the Torah. The 24000 students learned with this great rabbi but they failed to follow what he taught as the cardinal rule; instead they gossiped, and weakened each other through slander.
Their senseless hatred of one another, their inability to be civil, led to the unraveling of community. When an illness crept into their midst, they had no resistance to fight it and according to tradition, all succumbed to an untimely death, with one day’s exemption, the 33rd day of the counting called L’og B’omer. This brief reprieve of their treatment of each other didn’t last and tragically the next day, the plague resumed, as well as the restrictions we still practice on weddings, concerts and hair cuts until Shavuot.
Wouldn’t you think that with all these fast days, minor and major, that we would learn this lesson aboutsinat chinam once and for all? Unfortunately, we are still learning.
Take the sinat chinam, the senseless hatred of the Israeli ultra orthodox Ashkenazi Jews called Heredi, who this spring refused to let their daughters attend school with ultra orthodox Sephardic Jews, first dividing the playground where their little girls used to play together then demanding segregation. The Heredi believe in principle, that the Sephardic Jewish families are not as observant. They defend their position on the grounds that some of the Sephardic families own a television or computer. With such devices, Sephardic girls would be exposed to crude and unchaste immorality of the secular culture.
One of the chief rabbis of the Heredi community called in the Talmudic argument that allows a person to even go to war on such issues of principle. Ashkenazic fathers and mothers actually chose jail instead of sending their daughters to the integrated school.
Sinat chinam is when the Women at the Wall, gather a distance from the Western Wall, on the New Moon festival, Rosh Chodesh, to pray. Instead of being treasured for their commitment, they find themselves the objects of hurled curses, forced to wear their tallit like a scarf and sometimes have chairs thrown at them by a raging ultra orthodox men.
Sinat chinam is when the ultra orthodox Israeli government battle to adjust the Law of Return to restrict non-orthodox converts from becoming citizens because in their eyes, they are not Jewish enough. Given the high stakes of Arab neighbors surrounding Israel on three sides, who can afford that kind of distraction, that kind of divisiveness and limitation on tribe affiliation.
What about here? How are we affected by sinat chinam? Right now, in our country is a mounting fear and hatred of American- Muslims. I am not discussing the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the planned Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan, but rather the intensity of Islamaphobia within our country. Threats to burn the Koran enraged the world this past week. A few of our citizens publically tore pages of the Koran while making vile suggestions for its use. We Jews have been on the receiving end of this kind of treatment, we know how quickly rational people become irrational when led to believe such conduct is acceptable.
The terrorists who committed the September 11th crimes nine years ago, took the lives of all Americans on the hijacked planes and the twin towers, taking the lives of all innocents including Jews, Christians, Atheists and Muslims. Those who violated our country were terrorists and yet, wefail, if we link all American Muslims to those murderers. There have been extremists of many a religion and race. Wefailas human beings when all are blamed for their insanity.
I think of the treatment of American Japanese who were interred in camps during World War II. One woman, Mary Fujamoto, I have known all of my life. A gentle seamstress, her life and her husband’s life were shattered when forced into harsh confinement simply based on their race. The Fujamotos were not linked to the World War; they were hard working Americans who became demonized by association; something for which we now, as a nation, feel great shame. Today, when we brand all American-Muslims, as terrorists, what have we become?
What an odd twist of fate to be a Jew, knowing how Jew and Muslim relate politically throughout the world, and yet here we are here on Yom Kippur checking ourselves for traces of sinat chinam.
In all cases of sinat chinam, there is a feeling of justification, a kernel of truth on which to plant our feet. There is a principle at stake, and we’re going to defend it, by George! The chain of reaction quickly gets fired off. Sinat chinam becomes a badge of loyalty to the cause. But how productive is a hate-filled heart in the long run?
The rabbis offered solid teaching for this age-old problem. There is a cure for senseless hatred and that is rachamim, in English, compassion. Rabbi Nachman taught that G-d created the world for the sake of compassion and for this reason G-d created an absurd world, one filled with unanswerable questions. Only when we take off the blinders of judgment and superiority, and recognize that the person next to us is just as human as we are, can compassion take root.
We can begin to practice compassion first with people with whom we have, hopefully no sinat chinam. If we practice it first with a safe person where there is no conflict, we can hopefully expand it to those with whom we harbor negative feelings. With practice, we may move closer to seeing that we all have wounds, broken places; daunting struggles. With practice, we can learn to want joy and success for everyone around us. And from that place, the impossible becomes possible.
Take a moment to briefly look at the person on each side of you, see the color of their eyes, share a smile then return your focus here.
The person next to you, the one you just looked at once played on the playground. The person you just looked at once had a first day of school and may have been terrified that there would be no one to sit with at lunch. The person you just looked at fell down a number of times, and might have been teased and bullied at recess.
The person you just looked at rode a bike for the very first time, and felt the exhilaration of freedom. The person next to you gets hungry and tired and grumpy and may feel that way right now. The person next to you may harbor regret, and wants very much to be positive and hopeful. The person next to you gets lonely now and then; loses their temper when anxious, worries about the future, about bills, losing a job or getting a job or source of income. He or she worries in some cases about children or family, about health, age, weight, hair and desirability.
The person next to you may have suffered the loss of a loved one. The person next to you wants to be productive, and valued, and wants, just as you do, to live in a safe world.
When we recognize these truths about the person next to us, then the walls of judgment dilute and compassion fills us up where annoyance or rancor ran the show. In our hearts we really want to say: “Me too, I feel the same way. Can’t we just agree that we are in this family of life together?” Because once we are kin; there is hope.
The purpose of a fast day is not because we are bad and need to suffer. The purpose of our fast day is to think about sinat chinam in our own hearts and recognize how destructive it is, for our health, our families and our community.
Pastor Greg Boyle, author of Tattoos on the Heart, gave a talk in Sacramento last week. Pastor Boyle, a Jesuit priest, works in a neighborhood with the highest concentration of murderous gang activity in Los Angeles. His parish is located between two public housing projects. Rather than give into the hatred, and accept the violent cycles and turf battles, he challenged it head on, saying, “We all have wounds, broken lives, daunting struggles. The only way to fight despair is through working together.”
For already twenty years, through challenging the allusion that we are separate, Pastor Greg Boyle, known affectionately as G-dog, has successfully created with these gangs “HomeBoys Industries” for jobs and job training.
Homeboys Industries provides encouragement so that young people who had been the most notorious gang members, could work together and learn the mutual respect that comes from collaboration. His main teaching is that nothing stops a bullet like a job, and that there is no life that that is less valuable than any other. In place of revenge, compassion now rules the ‘hood.
Ultimately, the cure for sinat chinam, is about beingwilling to see everyone as a soul, just as we are and from that vantage point, a new reality becomes possible.
May it be, that Yom Kippur, our major day of restraint, becomes a banquet of compassion toward everyone and everything in our lives.
Amen
Congregation Beth Shalom is a small, friendly Reform Jewish congregation located in the heart of Carmichael. Members come from throughout the region, including Sacramento, Roseville, Folsom, El Dorado Hills, Elk Grove, and beyond. We come from all walks of life and embody diverse Jewish backgrounds, belief, and practice.