Aspiration, Appreciation and Awe

Aspiration, Appreciation and Awe

46^th Interfaith Thanksgiving Service
of the Hebrew Congregation of St Thomas and
the St. Thomas Reformed Church

November 15, 2018

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

         Thank you, all of you, for this wonderful service.  Because I am speaking tonight, I was tempted to use that nice, flat parking space around the corner.  You know, the one with sign that says: “You park here, you preach here.”  I’ve always kind of wondered – is that a threat or a promise?

         Friends, for me, personally, and on behalf of my congregation, it is so wonderful to be here with you tonight.  To Reverend Neevel, to Music Director Chanelle Schaffer, I am grateful for your presence in my life, as colleagues, and as friends.  To so many of the members of this holy congregation, you have been an anchor for this neighborhood – and, again, in many ways, for me and for my family, in our short time on island. 

         And speaking very personally, to this church… it was to this place, to this communal circle that I came one Sunday morning, in search of solace and spirituality and…song…  in the aftermath of our hurricane altered High Holy Days last year.   Despite our world-wide network of thousands of overseas families, literally thousands, we are – and especially right after the storms we were -- a fairly small on island community.  We managed, as we have in an unbroken chain of two centuries, to celebrate our most sacred season.  But, barely.  Just,  barely. 

         And I felt, in a way I truly never had before, some intenal need.  I found that, here, in a gift you gave to me.  The theology may have been different, a bit.  But here I found fellowship and energy, warmth and light that lifted me up, and carried me on as we took our first, tentative steps towards recovery.

         A message for us all, tonight, in three parts.  About power and light.  About the good that can come from awareness, and acknowledgement. About aspiration and appreciation and awe. 

        Part One.

         The journey from last year to this one.  It stays with me, I think, each milestone on that road, each stage of the new normal.  I remember when the theater finally opened, in February.  The first film we saw was Black Panther.  What an amazing thing it was, to see that film, in this place, with so much of a

sense of power and spirit coming together – recovery, pride, color, affirmation.  If a theater can be its own form of sanctuary, if any  expression of art at its most powerful can work this way -- that was an experience of awe.

         So why am I talking about a comic book?  What does that have to do with a place where we dive into the Bible, or try to find lessons for our lives?  What might tie all of that together?

I brought a book with me tonight. It was a curious gift, from a past president of my former congregation, amused and a bit embarrassed, both, when she gave it to me.  This is The Book of Genesis: Illustrated, by R. Crumb – a Biblical comic book.  Unabridged but… unorthodox.  And, um, anatomically correct.  I have it with me, now, as a kind of tangential tribute to a different writer… a Jewish man we lost this past week.

         I am not sure, in the end, over the past hundred years, who or what has inspired more people to read: the Bible?  J.K. Rowling?  Or Stanley Martin Lieber.  AKA Stan Lee.

         There have been many clips played over the past few days, past interviews with this prolific comic-book writer.  What stands out for me, is a comment Lee made about those of his characters which I, perhaps, know the least well: not Spider Man or Thor, Ant Man or Daredevil, Iron Man or Doctor Strange, not the Hulk or the Avengers or Peggy Carter or, um, er, you know, the Scarlett Johannson one.  But the few I never watched, and know little about: the X-Men. 

         In their first appearance, Lee said, the first issue which featured them, they were… regular people, who wore ordinary street clothes.  The response was immediate, overwhelming and unanimous.  It went something like this: amazing, fantastic, great story, can’t wait for the next one.  But get them into costumes, or we won’t buy it at all.

         So maybe it makes for a better book.  Visually appealing, easier on the eye, jumps out.  But beyond the glitz and the graphics, belied by a format so seemingly juvenile that serious stuff slides in unannounced… there is a very powerful premise behind all this superhero stuff. 

         Darkness may come, the light may go out, hope may be lost and forgotten.  But there is still wonder in the world.  Marvel and miracles.  And it could be you, and it could be me.  The real power is in us.  If we but open our eyes, and discover… what we are truly able to do.

         Power, and aspiration.  End, of Part One.

        Part Two.

         I came here on a Sunday morning, last year.  Two weeks ago, we needed you.  And many of you… came to us.  What remains with me, from our Solidarity Shabbat, is Imam Mohammed calling all the clergy who were there forward at the end of his remarks.  There, on our pulpit, stood the imam, an AME preacher, a Moravian minister, Reverend Neevel… and one very moved rabbi.  At a time of feeling torn, it was grace and healing and hope.  In the midst of division, and even out of authentic diversity, it was a moment of unity.

         But the beat goes on, and the world goes as it will, and the news just never stops.  Whole communities in flames, smoke in our eyes – and blood on our hands…with yet another murder of an innocent African American.  No, not just innocent.  A hero, a protector, a guard in uniform, who did his job, ended an attack, and was shot on sight by the first police on the scene, no hesitation or question or pause.  How do, how can we still see ourselves in each other, how come together with such barely contained forces beneath the surface, so quick to tear us apart?

         Unity.  Oneness.
         I think of the most sacred prayer of my tradition.  It is not really a prayer at all, but a statement, about oneness.  It is the Shema, the declaration of faith.  “Hear O Israel, the Eternal One is our God, the Eternal God is one.”

         As an aside I will share that I had been taught, growing up that this sentence was pure and clear, a straightforward declaration of unadulterated monotheism, our initial and still ultimate declaration of the Oneness of God.  Well, not so fast.  That…may not have been what it meant at first.

         But I will share what these words mean to me.  To do so, I turn from the comic to the cosmos, theology to cosmology, metaphysics to astrophysics.

         What is the Holy Grail, if you will,  of modern math, the ultimate puzzle all particle physicists are trying to solve?  It is the Grand Unified Field Theory, the hint, the hunch that all the basic forces of the universe, all of them -- electricity, magnetism, light, gravity, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, all of them can be defined by a single set of mathematical equations.  Even if… even if it will take, as scientists now believe… twelve spatial dimensions for the math to work out.  And even if… even if…the world worked this way… only for the first billionth of a billionth of a second in the life of the universe.  Still, you figure out that math and I promise, Stockholm will come calling.  Your Nobel Prize is just around the corner.

         Think about it.  If this is true, if this is right, then… even if all that is and all that will be were in total harmony for the only briefest of moments, still, if this is right then there is a connection between everything.  What we say, what we pray for when the world seems broken and shattered… is literally, physically, scientifically true.  There is a unity in the universe, a primal pull which somehow calls and binds and brings together all that seems distinct.  Literally true, that the molecules in my fingernail, your tears, the wood in that pew, the stone we stumbled on coming in, mist in the moist cloud over Tortola, the spiked tail of the iguana outside our building, all of it, all of it, is just stuff that shifts places, exchanges itself, transforms.  All we are is energy congealed in ways temporarily distinct and only superficially separate and apart.

         There is, yes, much which makes us different, and I cherish that.  But we are also, fundamentally, literally, truly, part of each other.  We are one, the world is one, God is one.

        Aspiration. We are more powerful that we can possibly imagine.
        And awe.  Everything is connected.  The universe throbs with a beating heart of divinity, a oneness at the heart of the world.

        End of part two.

Part Three.  Appreciation.

         There is so much that is wrong with the world.  There is a saying that goes: “if you are not outraged, you are not paying attention.”  But as another colleague taught me: we can lead with that, but we cannot end with it.  “If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention.”  Yes.  But, also: “if you are always outraged… you are not paying attention either.”

         Thanksgiving comes.  All of us need, I believe, this prod to appreciate.  This gift of gratitude.

In English we say that we should count our blessings.  In Judaism, though we may not emphasize this enough, this is literally what we do. At some level, I believe it is a large part… of what spirituality is about.

         Do you remember the opening of Fiddler on the Roof, the montage of encounters, snippets of shtetl life?  Disciples approach the rebbe and pose a question.   Is there,” the disciples ask… “is there a blessing for the czar?”

         The rebbe responds: “Of course.  There is a blessing for everything.  May God bless and keep the czar…far away from us!”

         I have heard this exchange hundreds of times and still it makes me smile.  But the important part is what comes first.  “There is a blessing for everything.”

         There is a blessing for everything.  This night, we come together from different traditions.  What I have just said… it is, I think, a fundamentally Jewish way of looking at the world.  But it can also be a gift, to all of us.

         I love… I really have come to cherish… the Christian tradition of… spontaneous blessings, the offering of the heart, the search for the right words for each and every occasion.  What we do is a bit different.  There is a quiver of customized arrows, a whole set of plug and play prayers to use for many different moments.  There is the blessing to be said on food from a tree, and that which comes from the ground.  There is a generic blessing for meat, fish, and eggs – and a special prayer for chocolate chip cookies (well, baked goods). 

         And there are blessings for what we see: a friend, trees blossoming for the first time in a season, a rainbow, a tall mountain, Magen’s Bay, a great scholar, the ruler of a country.  (Maybe even the governor of a territory.  I have to check on that one.)

         You may yawn your way through life.  You may blink and miss the power of a moment.  But no matter how mundane it may seem on the surface, every encounter is supremely sublime.   As we saw, under the surface of the superficial lies the DNA of divinity, if we but open our eyes and see.  

         And just as with DNA, where every cell contains the code for the entire organism, so does every moment hold within it echoes of eternity.  Every experience is an encounter with the entirety of existence.

         For Doctor Who fans I would say that this is the Tardis of tradition.  And it is bigger on the inside than the out.  When we are aware, when we acknowledge the connections, when we give voice to our appreciation, we step into the web of eternity, where then is now and here is there and dark is light and God is here and all are one.

Aspiration.  We have power, beyond what we think.
Awe.  We open our eyes and see a unity beneath our differences.
Appreciation.  We make our oneness real, when we give it voice and value.

Power, connection and expression.  The very act of opening our eyes, and coming together, and giving thanks… just that, can change the world.

May we all have… a powerful, spiritual and very meaningful Thanksgiving.

Spitting Image

Spitting Image

         Once again, in a cemetery, I thought about a pre-school.  It was our annual Kever Avot Graveside Memorial Service, held at both of the historic Jewish cemeteries in St. Thomas, on the Sunday in between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. And in some ways, there is nothing like a scheduled, non-funeral based visit to old graves to get you thinking about Jewish journeys, where we have come from and, perhaps, where we are going.

         Sadly there was almost no attendance at the older site, the Savan Cemetery, closed at near capacity in the 1830’s, and badly in need of restoration.  Still, it tells an amazing story.  There are gravestones in seven different languages there.

         There were more people at the “new” site (opened mid-1830’s?), in Altona.  And it was there, looking at a mixed and multi-racial group, older folks visiting family members they remembered, and toddlers hearing tales about people they never met, that I thought about the founding families of the synagogue.

         The names of those nine Sephardic families are found…everywhere on this island.  And around the world.  They are of now faces of every color, bearers of every creed, on the rolls of every church.  Soon, I want to organize an evening service, or a weekend of events, called “Roots and Wings,” for every person on these islands who have Jewish roots of some sort, or who are interested in Judaism, or who have heard of it, or who can spell it…  It will be, I think, a long list of invitees.  Whether many or few will be interested I don’t know; we can only find out by trying.

         But looking back to see who we are and where we might go is kind of a thing these days.  All it takes is spitting in a cup, or some other form of sharing yourself… with the commercial DNA-testing labs offering such services.

         I saw that a colleague spoke about 23andMe during the High Holy Days this year.  What a great topic – at least for Ashkenazic Jews.  Part of the information you get, apparently, is what percentage “Ashkenazic Jewish” you are.  I think I read that Sephardic roots are simply characterized as “Middle Eastern,” rather than Sephardic Jewish.

         Whatever the science behind the distinction, this raises interesting questions.  And those questions lead to more questions.

What is a creed, and what is a culture?  How much of who we are is about where we are from?  How will knowing the past impact us in the present?  Does our genetic history matter for more than medical purposes – and if so, why, and how, and to whom?  And: look at how many white-bread with mayonnaise eating middle Americans are discovering something about themselves they never knew, this newish Jewish part of them?  What will they do with the information?  How will this change them?

And, most chillingly, I often wonder this: what drove so many away?  Indifference, oppression, opportunities?  Or was it, perhaps, a closed-circle within our own community, cliquishness, making someone feel “other” and “out.”  Some of the stories I have heard here center around grandparents who did not feel welcome, or wanted, and who found a spiritual home elsewhere.

I don’t want to go too far down that road.  I sometimes am astonished that Jews find it so very easy to set aside a 4000-year old history and dynamic culture and intellectual inheritance not because of spiritual questions (although there is some of that), but because somebody (sadly, often a rabbi) looked at them the wrong way.  Yes, we make mistakes, we act imperfectly, and we turn each other off.   I have staked my own work, my passion, my devotion to the notion that, for most of us, and most of the time it is deeply worth it… to get past the flaws and bumps and bruises, however they may hurt.

But it is time for those “inside” the Jewish orbit to redouble or triple our efforts… to be more open, to be more welcoming, to reach out, to break up our cliques and widen our circles.   Because this is not just about liquid in a cup, or information in an envelope (or email).  And whether someone comes back with results that are 85% “Jewish” roots, or none at all… the ability to even ask indicates fluidity and curiosity, about identity and connection and community.

Science impacts society.  The physical affects the spiritual.  Just look at the religious changes brought about… by the printing press.  Or the phone.  Or the car.

People today are using new techniques to ask old questions.  They are looking back at an internal yesterday.  It is a perfect moment to build… a better tomorrow.