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Rabbi Janet Offel
Rosh Hashanah Day 5768
Temple Kol Tikvah

A Call to Responsibility

             How many of you took a children’s literature class in college?  Kiddie lit: at UCLA it was known as a “mick” or mickey mouse class, an easy A, impossible to get anything less than a B.  If you took kiddie lit pass/fail, it was slam dunk—all you had to do was show up for the final.

             But what often went unnoticed was the deep wisdom that children’s stories frequently offer, the insight that sometimes comes from getting eye to eye with a child.

             And so, this morning I begin with the prologue from the wonderful collection of children’s stories about the bible by Rabbi Marc Gellman, Does God Have A Big Toe?

             Before there was anything, there was God, a few angels, and a huge swirling glob of rocks and water with no place to go.  The angels asked God, “Why don’t you clean up this mess?”

             So God collected rocks from the huge swirling glob and put them together in clumps and said, “Some of these clumps of rocks will be planets, and some will be stars, and some of these rocks will be…just rocks.”

             Then God collected water from the huge swirling glob and put it together in pools of water and said, “Some of these pools of water will be oceans, and some will become clouds, and some of this water will be…just water.”

             Then the angels said, “Well God, it’s neater now, but is it finished?”  And God answered…

             “NOPE!”

             On some of the rocks God placed growing things, and creeping things, and things that only God knows what they are, and when God had done all this, the angels asked God, “Is the world finished now?”  And God answered:

             “NOPE!”

             God made a man and a woman from some of the water and dust and said to them, “I am tired now.  Please finish up the world for me…really, it’s almost done.”  But the man and the woman said, “We can’t finish the world alone!  You have the plans and we are too little.”

             “You are big enough,” God answered them.  “But I agree to this.  If you keep trying to finish the world, I will be your partner.”

             The man and the woman asked, “What’s a partner?” and God answered, “A partner is someone you work with on a big thing that neither of you can do alone.  If you have a partner, it means that you can never give up, because your partner is depending on you.  On the days you think I am not doing enough and on the days I think you are not doing enough, even on those days we are still partners and we must not stop trying to finish the world.  That’s the deal.”  And they all agreed to that deal.

             Then the angels asked God, “Is the world finished yet?” and God answered, “I don’t know.  Go ask my partners.”[1]

             A sweet children’s story?  Yes, yet in the book To Heal A Fractured World, written by the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, this same notion is noted when he writes, “One of Judaism’s most distinctive and challenging ideas is its ethics of responsibility, the idea that God invites us to become, in the rabbinic phrase, God’s ‘partners in the work of creation.’…God, the ultimate Other, asks us to reach out to the human other.  More than God is a strategic intervener, God is a teacher.  More than God does our will, God teaches us how to do [God’s will].  Life is God’s call to responsibility.”[2]

              One of the primary differences between Christianity and Judaism is in the distinction between the revelatory notions of salvation and redemption.  Whereas in Christianity, the primary focus is on personal salvation as the key to revelation, through a Jewish lens, the focal point is expanded to embrace a concept of societal redemption.  As Jews, we don’t suppose that everyone has to sign on to our belief system in order to be redeemed in the world to come.  Simply by following the seven Noahide laws: abstention from worshipping false gods, murder, stealing, committing adultery, taking the name of God in vain, eating flesh torn from the body of a living animal and following the positive command of setting up an effective, honest Judicial system, other faith systems are included in our redemptive world view.  Our own system is governed by the covenant at Sinai, the revelatory saga of the Jewish people, whereby we believe that every Jew: past, present and future stood together at the base of that windswept mountain in the desert.  The covenant at Sinai was not about the politics of nation-building, rather it was about the shared responsibility of creating a just society.

             Our focus, in other words, is not simply on our own personal faith-based relationships with God, but in working, as a people, to make the world a more just, compassionate and caring place.

             I would like to take a step back for just a moment and give a brief personal history.  I grew up in a Reform synagogue in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960’s.  I marched with my family for Soviet Jewry and an end to the Vietnam War, and I fed the hungry on the streets of San Francisco and participated in the oil-spill clean-up of the San Francisco Bay in the early 1970’s.  I participated in many of these activities through our synagogue.  But when I went off to college in the mid-70’s at UCLA, I didn’t have a sense of what was particularly Jewish about the whole thing.  Not only that, but I didn’t feel a spiritual connection to the work that I was doing.  In the late 80’s as I found my way back to Judaism through the circuitous route of dabbling in Zen Buddhism, my focus was primarily on developing a personal relationship with the Divine.  Yet I have come to realize over the past 20 years that what is primary to living a Jewish life is the fusing of the societal and personal, the imperative to reach out beyond myself and my personal relationship with God to partner with God and, perhaps more importantly, with other people in the work of building a more just, caring and compassionate society. 

             Yet, as a rabbi, as a religious leader in the Jewish community, the task seems more difficult than ever.  As Rabbi Sacks reminds us, “More than any previous generation, we have come to see the individual as the sole source of meaning.  The gossamer filaments of connection between us and others, that once held together families, communities and societies, have become attenuated.  We have become lonely selves in search of purely personal fulfillment.”[3]

             For too many of us, we have lost a sense of what it means to be Jewish.  We don’t have an understanding of the vocabulary tying us to the important work to which generations of Jews ascribed.  We don’t think that there is anything particularly Jewish about contributing to the societal effort that, in fact, we are called upon to participate in by the covenant at Sinai.

             What are the cornerstones of this vocabulary?

             Tzedakah, a word that comes from the Hebrew root for justice.  There is a wonderful story in our tradition about a sage who noted something strange about the geography of the Holy Land.  There are two seas in Israel: the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee.  The latter is full of life: fish, birds, vegetation.  The former, as its name suggests, contains no life at all.  Yet they are both fed by the same river, the Jordan.  The difference, he said, is that the Sea of Galilee receives water at one end and gives out water at the other.  The Dead Sea receives but does not give.  The Jordan ends there.  To receive without reciprocating is a kind of death.  To live is to give.

             Judaism does not see inequalities in society as the will of God.  Many of our most famous sages were themselves poor men.  In Judaism there is nothing inevitable or divinely willed about social and economic inequality.  In other words, those of us who are blessed with plenty have a responsibility to those less fortunate.  Indeed, even the most unfortunate among us have a responsibility to do what they can to help better the world in which we all live.  Don’t get me wrong.  In Judaism there is absolutely nothing wrong with having a lot of money.  Poverty is not a virtue.  Rather, our tradition obligates us to assist others who are less fortunate.  The virtue lies in reaching out to help.  Everyone remembers that scene from “Fiddler on the Roof” in which the beggar asks Tevye for a few kopeks.  Tevye responds that he doesn’t have the money, it’s been a bad week, to which the beggar remarks, “Just because you had a bad week, I should suffer?”  Funny, yes, but also a deeply engrained concept of distributive justice that is at the heart of our religious system.

 Another keystone in our tradition happens to be one of my favorite words in the Hebrew lexicon: hesed.  Hesed really can’t be defined in English—it is often translated as lovingkindness, but that really doesn’t do it justice.  There is a midrash, a story in our tradition, that reminds us that Abraham and Sarah didn’t bring God into the world through metaphysical arguments or theological proofs, awesome miracles or military victories, but rather by welcoming strangers and providing them with food and shelter.[4]  Whereas tzedakah tends to relate more to our financial responsibility, hesed is love expressed as deed.  It is the means by which we deliver care and compassion through our actions rather than through monetary means.  Martin Luther King clearly understood this notion in his remark, “Ten cures for depression are to go out and do something for someone else and repeat it nine times.”

 And finally, the Jewish mystical notion of tikkun olam, repairing the world.  According to the Jewish mystical tradition, when God decided to form the world, it required an act of tzimtzum, or contraction, on the part of God.  In other words, if God was present everywhere before creation, God needed to contract in order to make space for the creation of the world.  Since God couldn’t completely leave the world devoid of Divine presence, the Holy One sent forth rays of light, but the light was too intense for the containers in which it was held, so the containers shattered, scattering fragments of light throughout the world.  According to the mystics of our tradition, it is our task to gather up these fragments, and restore them to their proper place.  We do so through our positive actions in the world.  In its original essence, this mystical/spiritual idea was about the metaphysical fracturing of souls, not about global poverty and disease.  But in modern times we have adapted the metaphor as a means to structure our commitment to social justice and social action.

 The prevailing message of our tradition is the importance of common belonging—our duties to one another, as well as to the past and the future.  For us as Jews, “…society is not a hotel where we receive services in exchange for money, but a home to which we feel attached and whose history is our own.”[5]

             I said it last year, and I am going to say it again this year.  This synagogue is only as strong, as compassionate, as caring as each and every member of this community, joining together to make a difference.  I can speak all around the city, write articles, lend my name and the name of this Temple to hundreds of organizations, but unless members of this congregation stand up and make a commitment to be God’s partners, it is all for naught.

             If being a member of this synagogue, or any synagogue, does not serve as a touchstone, not only reminding us of these core values of our faith, but imploring us to act, then we are not doing our job as Jewish communal institutions.  To be Jewish doesn’t necessarily mean to believe in a personal God, it does not mean to be of a certain social and economic strata, and it does not mean to close oneself off from the rest of the world.  What it does mean is to care, to care about the world in which we live and to strive to make this world a better place.

             Jewish World Watch, the West Valley Food Pantry, Valley Interfaith Council, these are just a few of the organizations of which this synagogue is a member.  But we need leaders.  In synagogues around the country, there are active and involved committees working in the areas of human rights, environmental awareness and social justice.  They are being led by synagogue members who are passionate about their responsibility to each other and to the larger world in which we live.  As a congregation, we must lend a hand, we must stand up and be involved in the work of being God’s partners.

             Today, and throughout our Yom Kippur services, you will find sign-up sheets in the foyer.  Sign up, sign on, get involved in the partnership by which we are mandated as Jews.  Help to make Kol Tikvah, the Voice of Hope, a true beacon of community action.  Each of us must heed the call.  For as our tradition teaches us, to be a good person one doesn’t have to be a Jew.  But to be a good Jew, one does have to be a good person.

             Each and every day, as we go through our lives, we must remember the three cornerstones of our religious tradition’s partnership with God and with all of humanity:

             Tzedakah: Reaching out with our own financial resources to provide for those less fortunate.

             Hesed:  Delivering care and compassion through our actions towards others, particularly those in need.

             And tikkun olam:  Repairing the world through a commitment to social justice and social action.

             For as the 17^th century English poet and theologian John Donne reminds us: “All mankind is of one author, and is one volume…No man is an island, entire of itself…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

[1] Does God Have A Big Toe? Marc Gellman, New York: Harper Collins, 1989, pgs. 1-3.

[2] To Heal A Fractured World, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks,

[3] To Heal a Fractured World, pg. 3.

[4] Genesis Rabba 39:14.

[5] To Heal a Fractured World, pg.

Other sermons:

Erev Rosh Hashanah 5768 - Sacred Theater

Yom Kippur  Morning 5768 -A Final Act of Human Dignity

Kol Nidre 5768 Finding Our Own Path to God and Torah

The Paradox of our Time adaptation