Sermon: Grace Baptist Church, June 24, 2007
Rabbi Eric Polokoff, B’nai Israel of Southbury
The Rev. Larry Green was a well-respected colleague, who, during the course of a 10 day interfaith pilgrimage together to Israel this past February, under the auspices of the Anti-Defamation League of Connecticut, over things like shvarma (a meal that I suspect would not pass muster with his wife) and souvenir shopping (an activity not relished by mine); over lectures and shared learning – the Rev. Larry Green became a friend. To state the obvious: he is a sincere and thoughtful gentleman, an effective minister and communal leader. I am deeply honored – and somewhat daunted – to speak this morning in this, his spiritual home. Accepting the Rev. Green’s invitation to be here this morning, and grateful for his friendship and confidence, I was nonetheless concerned that you, his Baptist congregation, are used to far finer preaching than is generally normative within my own Reform Jewish denomination. So I fear that in the aftermath of the ADL mission first you had to deal with Rev. Green’s jet-lag, and now sermon-tag. Hence I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable unto God – and be acceptable to us all.
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Friends, Jephthah was a guy who, to use a later metaphor, never spent enough time either in Hebrew School, or, for that matter, in Sunday School, celebrating Christian Education Day and Christian educational initiatives. In synagogues across the world, Jews chanted yesterday from the Prophets of how Jephthah, rejected and forsaken, ends up a gang lord in no-man’s land. The Israelite elders, however, are in need of a strong fighter. They rehabilitate Jephthah, and induce him to return. As chieftain and readying to engage the enemy in battle Jephthah makes an oath, promising to perform an ancient ritual of sacrifice should he return safe and victorious. Only Jephthah’s oath is foolishly cast. He swears: “Then whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me… I will offer up as a burnt offering.” (Judges 11:31) Sadly, Jephthah’s own daughter was the first to emerge and greet him. Determining that he cannot retract his vow, Jephthah’s daughter’s life is taken.
Aghast as they read this story, Judaism’s sages held Jephthah and the high priest, Pinchas, as culpable for the tragedy. Commenting on the verse: “Then whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me… I will offer up as a burnt offering.” The rabbis’ explain: If a donkey, dog or cat [which may not be sacrificed] had come out, would he have offered it as a burnt offering? And the holy one of blessing, sent his way something that was not fitting… In other words, it was already established in Genesis and Leviticus that certain animals were not to be used for sacrifices, and as The Binding of Isaac indicated, that human sacrifice was prohibited. Others might do so – the king of Moab, or the Ammonites offering up their children to Moloch – but not Israel; no such action would ever be acceptable to the Lord, the Holy One of Blessing. Jephthah, however, was too unlearned – he’d skipped Bible study too many times, he’d spent too little time in front of sacred books – to realize that his vow was already null and void.
Moreover, and far worse, brimming with false pride, Jephthah was too haughty to do anything about it. The Rabbis add in their commentary: And was not Pinchas, the High Priest, there to release Jephthah from his vow? But Pinchas said: “He needs me, and I should go to him? He should come to me!” And Jephthah said: “I am the Head Officer of Israel. I should go to Pinchas? He should come to me!” Between the two of them the girl was lost…
Consider the Rabbis’ perspective and their message. They teach Jephthah’s daughter perished not just because of religious zealotry, nor just because of religious ignorance. Jephthah’s daughter died as a direct consequence of hubris, pretension and willful conceit. Jephthah’s Hebrew name, Yiftach, underscores this tragic irony: Yiftach means “he will open.” – but does he? Jephthah closes the door for himself and his family.
Humility in leadership is good; it’s a needed and common theme. For Jews, a related lesson was presented in the Scriptural reading two weeks ago. We read from the Torah of Korah’s rebellion against his cousins Moses and Aaron. Trying to contain the revolt, Numbers 16:12 states: “Moses sent to call Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab; but they replied: ‘we will not come up.’” Dathan and Abiram’s response didn’t surprise the 19th century Polish Rabbi Simcha Bunim. He explained: ‘A true leader doesn’t sit in his tent and send messengers, he goes out himself.’
Now fast forward about three millennia, from Jephthah’s time to ours. In 2007 in Waterbury and its environs the issues we face are assuredly less dramatic, yet they are barely less challenging. We, too, must go out and reach out. We, too, must communicate. We, too, must promote biblical literacy. We, too, must ensure that neither our children nor our community is sacrificed in a no-man’s land of ego or indifference.
Jews and African-American Christians, two profound beneficiaries of the Civil Rights Movement, we have a storied history of collaboration, especially during the 1950s and 1960s. Dr. King and other leading Civil Rights figures marched and went to jail with my teachers, and my teacher’s teachers. NAACP Past President Kivie Kaplan was a Reform Jew, and demographically, Andrew Goodman and Mickey Schwerner were typical of white Civil Rights workers: Jews comprised the vast majority of white volunteers during Mississippi’s Freedom Summer. Conversely, prominent Black public figures including A. Philip Randolph, Paul Robeson, and the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., amongst others, promoted Jewish rescue during the Holocaust and the creation of a Jewish state in British-controlled Palestine. So too, it was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. whom with characteristic insight, castigated those wishing to dismantle Israel as a Jewish state, labeling anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism.
Yet if we are honest with ourselves and one another, we will recognize that at other times we sat in our own tents. Jewish racism or derogatory Yiddish terms like “shvartzer” were not the product of an over-exercised Black imagination, nor was Black anti-Semitism, or references to “Hymietown” a Jewish paranoia. If we are candid, we will admit that like Jephthah and Pinchas at our worst moments some did succumb to prejudice or condescension, as each group awaited the other’s apology.
And further exacerbating such incidents of estrangement was an inadequate appreciation of our different experiences in America. After all, as my classmate Rabbi Doug Sagal explains, Jewish Americans have seen America as a refuge, a safe haven granting freedoms and opportunities unknown in the Old World. For Jewish immigrants with memories of the ghetto or shtetl or the Nazis, Emma Lazarus’s words, inscribed on the Torch of Liberty, with its sentiments of the “tempest tossed” “yearning to breathe free” and America, in turn, lifting “my lamp beside the golden door,” rang true, particularly after the civil rights movement opened previously closed doors. But for African-Americans, this same America was no Promised Land. Rather, America began as an Egypt, a place of a captivity and bitter discrimination; of slavery and Segregation, of Jim Crow and ghettos, of promises un-kept or incomplete. This past winter I was reminded of that reality before our ADL interfaith group even left Connecticut. In a pre-mission session Rev. Green asked our Israeli briefer what he might expect in his encounters with average Israelis. She responded that Israel, while far from perfect, is a society demonstrably less racist than our own. It was a nice and I believe correct answer; but note the question – Rev. Green was not speaking as a non-Jew or a Christian. Later, several of the African-American trip participants spoke admiringly of Jewry’s, including Ethiopian Jewry’s, rooted-ness to its homeland in Israel; a connection to the past that slavery effectively denied them. Both incidents underscored how Emma Lazarus’ idealized Lady Liberty did not greet the Amidstad.
And yet, despite all these things, despite our historical differences, it is nonetheless still true that for Jews and for African-American Christians, what unites us has been greater – far greater – than what divides us. For we both have historically believed – and we both continue to hold as our fundamental creed – that our God is a God who redeems in history… and that humanity is to be free. Jews and African-American Christians, we know a common spiritual: the Exodus remains our shared story. The first commandment: “I, the Lord, led you out of the Land of Egypt, the house of bondage.” The consequences have shaped our very identities. For amidst our distinct travails experienced in such large measures, amidst Auschwitz and slave ships, amidst cruelty, death and untold sorrow, our two peoples steadfastly affirmed justice, as it is written: “Let justice well down as waters, righteousness as a mighty stream.”
But the world remains far from whole. Mightily, injustice still abounds. Fascists of various stripes, including the Klan, continue to target both of us. A most acute challenge, however, has been the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. Shamefully, amidst all the pseudo-news we get (think Paris Hilton), little is reported about Darfur, where since 2003, as part of a plan of state-sponsored ethnic cleansing more than 200,000 have been killed; countless women and girls have been raped; and 2.5 million are displaced and live precariously. Admittedly, the politics are quite complicated. Yet the bottom line is this: the victims are targeted for genocide because they are Black, and are identified as Africans.
Leviticus teaches: “Do not stand idle while your neighbor bleeds.” B’nai Israel and Grace Baptist church, let us consider how, together, we can promote human rights and human dignity going to one another, let us study and dialogue together. Perhaps we might even sing together. My congregation has just hired its first Cantor, a woman who grew up in Russia, and then lived for a decade in Israel. Imagine my surprise and delight to learn that before she entered seminary she conducted a Gospel choir in San Francisco. Let us find words and melodies that will be acceptable to us all.
In seeking more than the isolation of our own tent, my friend, the historian Cheryl Greenberg offers a caveat. In her book Troubling the Waters: Black-Jewish Relations in the American Century, Professor Greenberg cautions us against unrealistic expectations that leads to disappointment. Let us recognize that not every Jew has been or will be sensitive to the African-American experience – or vice-versa. Similarly, while visiting my congregation earlier this month, my friend the Rev. Larry Green, advised: We still don’t really know one another yet. We still don’t, and the words of a mouth might be as careless as a Jephthah’s.
A wise rabbi once said: “You are not required to complete the work, but neither are you at liberty to abstain from it.” Had Jephthah studied his Bible he would have known that impure Israelites, including warriors in distant places or whom had come into contact with corpses, were given a second opportunity, a second Passover, with which to thank God for freedom. Why? Because God likes second chances. African-Americans and Jews reflecting on our own collaboration and inspiration, we, too, can yiftach; we can be open to steady and renewed encounter. Indeed, in the Prophetic portion to be read by Jews this upcoming Sabbath, Micah succinctly explains precisely what Jephthah could not grasp. Micah said: Would the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams? With myriads of streams of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for my sins? God has told you, O mortal, what is good and what the Lord requires of you: only this: to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.
Realistically building upon past and present friendships, anchoring ourselves in the values of Christian education or Hebrew school, may we avow to God and one another to heighten our learning and our sacred partnership. Embracing our similarities and our differences, may it never be said that between one community and the other, between Jews and African-American Christians, the future was lost.
Cain yehi Ratzon. Be this God’s Will.