Tikkun Ha-am: Renewing our People; Sermon for Yom Kippur 5768

I recently heard a story about a philosophy professor who lost his connection to Judaism. The chair of his department once asked him to pick up a visiting scholar who was arriving in town. The professor asked the chair, “why me?” and his colleague said, “you’re are a philosophy professor, and so is he, I think you’ll have an interesting discussion. He met the scholar, who turned out to be [none other than] Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, and the two of them were having a pleasant conversation on their way to the university when suddenly Dr. Heschel asked, “Are you Jewish?” to which the professor responded matter of factly, “yes.” At which point Heschel added, “And what are you doing about it?”

Heschel knew that the question, “Are you Jewish?” is more than a question, it is an existential challenge. And he knew that, “yes,” is no conclusive answer. It merely invites the next question, “and what are you doing about it?”

I find several things particularly interesting about the exchange between these two Jewish philosophy professors. First, if they discussed philosophy at all, it is not part of the story that has been passed down. After ascertaining that the young professor is Jewish, Heschel doesn’t ask him what he thinks about Judaism, or what he believes. He asks him what he is doing about it!

Second, the discussion is extremely personal, to some, maybe overly personal. You meet a person who is doing you the kindness of driving you from the train and immediately start challenging him about his identity and how he chooses to express it? What chutzpah!

This is not the time to go into the biography of Heschel, but suffice it to say, he was a man of courage and conviction. But in this instance, he must have a sense that the man was Jewish, and having determined that indeed he was, he addressed him as one Jew to another, like a member of his family. And indeed, that young man did return to Jewish life.

Before Judaism was a religion, we Jews were a people, an extended family, the children of Abraham and Sarah. God’s call to Abraham, Lech l’cha, “go forth from your native land… to the land that I will show you,” continues with a set of promises, the first of which is, “and I will make of you a great nation.” God asks no commitments of belief and makes no promises about launching a new faith. Judaism begins with a people, the Jewish people. Surely over time we became more than just a people, but at our core, we remain a people. We are bound to one another as family. And as professor Heschel demonstrated, members of a family care about one another.

Over these holy days I have been speaking about the Jewish concept of tikkun; repair. I have shared with you the wonderful teaching of the mystical book, the Zohar that we are part of a great chain of being in which all things are connected. Every act therefore is consequential. Every deed we do, for good or for bad, matters, and affects the balance of life.

Tikkun, I suggested, is about restoring balance, in our selves, in our relationships, and in our world. I have spoken about tikkun olam, our responsibility to repair the world, and tikkun nefesh, our efforts to heal our selves, and today I want to speak about tikkun ha-am, restoring wholeness to the Jewish people.

In the haftarah we are about to/just read Isaiah declares the meaning of our fast this day is to open our hearts to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to shelter the homeless, and never to hide from our own kin…”

This last phrase, mib’sarcha lo tit-a-lam, is better translated, “and not to be indifferent to you own flesh.” We Jews are like limbs of a single body. Whenever and wherever Jews suffer we should feel their pain, cry out for them, and most importantly, rally to their aid.

Jewish spirituality demands action. It is not enough to just to care about others. We need to act on their behalf. This was the import of Heschel’s question to the young professor. You’re Jewish? So what are you doing about it?

Tikkun Ha-am begins with reminding one another that we are Jews, and that to be Jewish means to take responsibility for one another.

Rabbi Danny Gordis tells a story I heard from my dear friend Rabbi David Weis about just such an act of tikkun ha-am.

It was 1990, and a group of Israeli girls from Jerusalem were on their high school’s annual trip to Poland. One day, while in Krakow, they noticed a young man selling dolls. They were “Jew dolls,” made to look like traditional Jews. Jew dolls for sale in a country where nearly 95% of the Jewish population was destroyed at the hands of the Nazis and their Polish collaborators! But business is business, and with so many Jews making pilgrimage to Poland, Jew dolls are surely a good sell.

Having very little money, the girls were going to pass on these ‘souvenirs’ until some of them noticed that the “books” these dolls were holding looked remarkably authentic. The Hebrew looked like real Hebrew. In fact, the letters looked very much like the calligraphy one would find in a Sefer Torah. On closer examination they were convinced that these miniature books had been cut from an actual Sefer Torah.

They complimented the man on the authenticity of his dolls and asked where he’d gotten the beautiful parchments. Flattered, he told them his uncle had a big scroll of it in the nearby town. When they asked where his uncle had gotten it, he told them it had been in the house of a Jew during the war and his uncle had taken it after the Jew disappeared. “Could we see it?” they asked. He agreed and brought it back the next day.

He showed them what was left of the scroll and the girls saw immediately that it was Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus – the first three books of the Torah. Apparently, the two other books had already been carved up for the dolls. The girls instinctively knew what they had to do. They pooled their money, bought the Torah, smuggled it out of Poland and brought it home to Israel.

They took it to a place in Jerusalem where such scrolls are repaired, but the work was too expensive, and the project was put on hold.

Those girls graduated, moved on with their lives, and the Torah remained un-repaired.

Fast forward to 2004 - fourteen years later -and another senior class from the same High School made the trip to Poland. These girls had an extraordinarily powerful experience, and during their trip, heard the story of the Torah that their predecessors, now in their thirties, had smuggled out of Europe.

This class decided to complete the work their schoolmates had begun. They raised the necessary funds, had the Torah repaired, and on a Sunday evening in Jerusalem it was danced into its new home in the school auditorium qua synagogue, where, instead of being carved up for dolls, it is now read by young women who understand what it means.

And what does it mean? Why did those girls spend all their money and take such risks to rescue a damaged Torah scroll from Poland? And what moved those girls 14 years later to go to such lengths to have that scroll repaired?

I am convinced it was more than the religious significance of the Torah that inspired them. I believe they saw Jewish souls in that Sefer Torah; that it represented to them the tangible remains of Jews who had lived and died near Krakow. By smuggling that scroll out of Poland they redeemed those Jewish souls and brought them home. 14 years later that next group of girls understood this and decided to complete this sacred task by bringing that Torah back to life.

It was an incredible act of tikkun ha-Am, Jewish healing, to renew the last remnant of Jews they never knew yet embraced as their own. It was an extraordinary act of Jewish love.

How did those girls see Jewish souls in that broken Sefer Torah? They saw it with their Jewish souls, because one Jewish soul can see another. And once they saw, they knew in their hearts they had to perform the mitzvah of tikkun.

As Israelis, the mitzvah of tikkun ha-Am, repairing the Jewish people, was in their blood. It is an integral part of what being Jewish meant to them, and so it must be for all Jews!

Israel embodies and embraces this mitzvah as its reason for being. Even before the State was born, the Jewish Agency was created for the purpose of tikkun ha-Am, to bring Jews home to Israel, one by one. Not just young vibrant Jews who could build the land and fight for freedom, also broken, sick and defenseless Jews from Europe and Arab lands; they too, were brought home to be healed and renewed.

Many of us grew up in homes with a little blue tzedakah box, for the Jewish National Fund, some of us have them still wehave them here in our religious school. Abraham Joshua Heschel describes how “years ago young… yeshiva students, would go around to houses and exchange empty boxes for the full ones. Once, a young boy went to empty the boxes in the town of Sanuk in Galicia, and as he entered the doorway of a shoemaker he said, “I’ve come to empty the Jewish National Fund box.” At first the shoemaker was silent, then he asked the visitor to sit down. He removed the boy’s shoes and began to put new soles on them. The young man was dumbfounded. “What are you doing?” he asked. The shoemaker replied, “I am a poor person and I cannot afford to make contributions to the Jewish National Fund, so I want to put new soles on your shoes.” You walk from house to house to save our people, “and I wish to have a portion in this mitzvah.” (Moral Grandeur p.65)

This mitzvah of tikkun-ha-am, this expression of love for our people is a light that has burned brightly in the hearts of Jews across time and space, like my great cousin David Kaplan of blessed memory, who helped bring Jews to Palestine when the British barred their entry. It was the driving force for Jews who smuggled arms for the Haganah, the Jewish army of the Yishuv. And it was this spirit that energized us to rescue the Jews of Russia and Ethiopia in more recent years.

Tikkun ha-Am means acting out of love to help our fellow Jews. It means never to hide from our own kin; never to treat them like they don’t belong to us, or us to them; never to act like they are not our family.

Friends, like that shoemaker, all of us here have a portion of the mitzvah of tikkun ha-Am, the act of repairing our Jewish people. Some of us know it, and some of us may not.

Every Jew who teaches their children and others to love and care about their fellow Jews and to love their Jewish heritage has a portion in the mitzvah of tikkun ha’am.

Every time we grow our Jewish souls, our yiddishe neshamas, by learning, praying, celebrating Shabbat and holy days, we help repair the Jewish people.

Every time we give to Jewish causes, to the synagogue, the Federation, the JCC, Jewish Family Service, and others, we help fix our Jewish world.

Every time we stand with Israel against those who deny her legitimacy, even if we disagree with the government in power, we do a great mitzvah for our people.

We show our love and help to heal our people’s wounds when we conquer fear and go to Israel when times are tough; when we remember the sacrifices Israelis have made for our land and for us; when we don’t forget our young soldiers like, Ehud Goldwasser, Gilead Shalit, and Eldad Regev who still languish in captivity.

When we remember Jews in distant lands and help them, be it Belarus or Buenos Aires, we keep faith with our creed.

Every non-Jew who lovingly supports their Jewish spouse, their Jewish child or their Jewish grandchildren, helps to sustain our people and deserves our deepest gratitude.

Every Jew who is a member of a synagogue fulfills the mitzvah of tikkun ha-Am; some by giving time and energy, and all of us, even the least involved, by what we give to support its mission. Sitting among us are founders and long time members of this temple. We salute you for all you have done for your people. Those of you who are guests, we welcome you and invite you to join our family. And I urge all of us to reach out to our Jewish neighbors who are not affiliated and encourage them to join a synagogue. Join me in resisting the trend of fast-food Judaism, the practice of purchasing Jewish services like buying a bar mitzvah or renting a rabbi and then discarding the package, the synagogue and the Jewish community. We must reject the idea that a Jew “no longer needs the synagogue,” when their children have grown up. Our people need us until the day we die! Just imagine what our Jewish community would look like if every Jew kept faith with every other Jew!

When we resist the tensions and pull of the secular world and tell our children that their Jewish education cannot be sacrificed for sports or clubs, and must not end with bar or bat mitzvah, we help to save a Jewish soul.

We bring wholeness to the Jewish people when we treat each other lovingly at all times, especially when fellow Jews challenge us to act on behalf of our people. For example, when a fellow Jew asks us to give to a Jewish cause, we should thank the caller kindly for their devotion to our people, and give what we can, if we can. Like the shoemaker, by our caring, we acquire a share in the mitzvah of tikkun ha-am.

Those Israeli girls saw Jewish souls in a broken Sefer Torah and resolved to affect a great tikkun. The task of our time is to rekindle the spark of the Jewish soul in every Jew, so that every Jew will feel his or her kinship with the Jewish people. So when we are asked, we will fervently declare, “yes, we are Jews, and we are doing something about it. We are living Torah, doing the sacred work of tikkun, tikkun ha-nefesh, tikkun ha-am, and tikkun olam; repairing our souls, lifting up the Jewish people, and bringing wholeness and healing to the world. V’chen yehi ratson!