First Day Rosh hashanah 2019
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Kol ha-olam kulo gesher tzar m’od. V’ha-ikkar lo l’fached klal
The whole world is a narrow bridge. The main thing is not to be at all afraid.
Those words from a song based on a teaching of Rabbi Nachman, one of the great Hassidic Masters. Rabbi Nachman’s world – Eastern Europe from 1772 to 1810 – was indeed a very narrow bridge. Europe was torn apart by war. Jews faced frequent pogroms, rampant disease and laws restricting Jewish economic activity. Two of Reb Nachman’s daughters died in infancy. His two sons both died within a year and a half of their birth. His house burnt to the ground in a fire. Reb Nachman’s wife died of tuberculosis, which would ultimately take his life as well.
Looking at Reb Nachman’s story, it is not hard to understand why he felt life was so precarious. Like a narrow bridge from which with the slightest misstep one could so easily fall. Despite that, Reb Nachman taught that the most important thing was to not be afraid.
When I was young, and we sang this song at camp, it was always fun. But as I get older, the song is not so fun anymore. I begin to realize that the words Reb Nachman taught us ring just as true today. Our lives indeed feel like a very narrow bridge.
We are reeling from the daily mass shootings in this country. Israel is increasingly under attack from Iran and its proxies, and now this country seems close to war with Iran as well, not to mention rising tensions with North Korea, China, and Russia. Climate change is happening faster than scientists predicted. Antisemitism is on the rise not only in Europe but in America. Automation, the switch to new energy sources and the transition from a manufacturing-based society to a service-based society continue to take a toll on the job market. And that’s only a partial list.
Add to that the internal challenges of an Israeli society divided against itself, struggling over issues of religion and state, the Haredi draft, the status of the territories, and its relationship with the diaspora. And the challenges facing an American Jewry that is grappling with a new sense of insecurity.
Then there is the narrow bridge of our own personal lives. Maybe, for you, it is dealing with illness, or the loss of a loved one or struggling with debt or unemployment, or a business that is failing. Maybe its trouble in your relationship with your spouse, your parents, your siblings or your children. Perhaps it is fighting an addiction. Or perhaps it is dealing with anxiety or depression.
Yes, life is a very narrow bridge. Even when things seem right, there is so much that could go wrong. In an instant, our lives could be turned upside down. Standing at the edge of that narrow bridge, fear draws our eyes downward to the chasm that lies below. What if we were to fall? We shudder and pull back. It would be so much easier to stay where we are. So much safer, we imagine, to turn back to the solid ground behind us. We were once just fine back there, weren’t we? Why do we need to cross? Head spinning, we forget why it is that we came to the bridge, what we sought to leave behind. All we can see is the depths below the bridge. Fear blinds us to what is on the other side, the reason for our crossing. Our gaze is focused on what we might lose, not on what we might gain. We look at all the challenges that lie before us, all the risks, and we are tempted to turn back.
Rabbi Nachman says to us: Do not be afraid. Cross the bridge. Keep your eyes on the other side.
Author Karen Thompson Walker tells the true story of the 1820 voyage of a whaling ship called the Essex. The Essex was rammed repeatedly by an 80-foot sperm whale far out at sea. The captain and crew abandoned their sinking ship for tiny whaleboats. They could have safely landed at one of the nearby islands awash with fresh water, but they heard rumors that cannibals lived there. Fearing the cannibals, they avoided the islands’ safe havens. As a result, most of the men on this voyage perished. There were no cannibals. Their fear blinded them to the one chance they had to be saved.
This morning in the Torah we read another example of the blinding power of fear. Hagar and her son Ishmael are banished from the home of Abraham and Sarah. Wandering aimlessly in the desert, running out of water, Hagar fears that all is lost. Terrified at the thought of having to watch her son die of thirst, she places him under a shrub, away from her view, and then sits down and weeps.
But God hears the cries of baby Ishmael. He sends a messenger who calls out to Hagar: ???-????????? al teer’ee – do not be afraid. Then God opens Hagar’s eyes, and she saw a well of fresh water. God did not make that well miraculously appear. It was there all along. In her distress, Hagar just could not see it.
Have you ever been blinded by fear? Too afraid to see the possibilities before you? Too scared to apologize when you know you were wrong? Too fearful of speaking up in defense of someone lest you might be attacked or ostracized. Too afraid to stop and help someone in need for fear of being late? Too nervous to try for that promotion or job, or join that group or befriend that person out of fear of being rejected? When we give in to our fears, we give up on our opportunity to be our best selves, and in the process, we lose.
These Days of Awe are all about risk taking. To admit I am wrong is to expose my vulnerability. To change means to chance failure. It is easier to hold on to familiar ways of doing things, even when it is hurtful to ourselves or others. And so, we stand at the edge of the narrow bridge, frozen, unable to cross. Rabbi Nachman says to us: Do not be afraid. Out of vulnerability comes strength. Out of failure comes growth. Only when we risk can we win.
I worry that American Jewry is becoming blinded by fear. Back in 2008, Edgar Bronfman wrote a small book entitled Hope, Not Fear: A Path to Jewish Renaissance. In it, Bronfman argued that for too long the Jewish world had defined itself by fear. We had built a Jewish identity out of anti-Semitism, our experience in the Holocaust, and the threats to Israel. Our motto was “Never Again,” and we taught Emil Fackenheim’s 614th commandment: “Do not give Hitler a posthumous victory.” What we need, wrote Bronfman, is the creation of a Judaism marked by a more open, celebratory and hopeful communal life. It must be a Judaism that is inclusive and that speaks to our hearts. It must be about values, justice and spirituality. It must give young Jews real, meaningful reasons to be Jewish.
For the past decade Jewish communities throughout North America rose to Bronfman’s challenge and poured resources into creating an extraordinary Jewish renaissance. Now the twin realities of mass shootings and rising anti-Semitism have pushed our communities into a focus on security. That focus is necessary. But as more and more dollars, time and mental and emotional energy are devoted to our physical security, we risk allowing our fears to overshadow our dreams, and to slip back into a “Judaism of survival.” But that “Judaism of survival” cannot survive.
Riding my bike through the Bow Valley National Park between Lake Louise and Banff this summer, I came upon the Castle Mountain Internment Camp, one of 24 camps where Canada incarcerated nationals from Germany and the Austrian-Hungarian Empire during World War One. The camps were a response to public fears that they would engage in enemy subversion.
During World War Two, the US – along with Canada, Mexico, and several South American countries – incarcerated those of Japanese descent because of the same unfounded fears. Those 120,000 who were interred here – nearly every person of Japanese descent in this country – were loyal American citizens. But our nation was so blinded by fear that we could not see it.
The Immigration Restriction League, founded in 1894, believed that immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe – by which they meant: Jews — were ethnically inferior to Anglo Saxons, that we would bring with us poverty and organized crime, and that we posed a threat to high wages and the American way of life. As a result of the League’s efforts – along with the efforts of the Ku Klux Klan, who counted among their members at that time 15% of the American population – Jewish immigration into the United States in the 1920’s would be cut by 97%. As a result, most of the Jewish families who were turned away perished in the Holocaust two decades later.
Today we fear immigrants and refugees from Central America. Like those before them, they are fleeing persecution and hardship and seeking a better life. But we too project our greatest fears onto them. As in the past, we worry that their numbers will somehow overwhelm us, that they will bring crime and destabilize our society. We are afraid that we will lose what we have and cannot see what we could gain. Our gaze is fixed on the chasm and we cannot see across the bridge.
That is the America of fear. But there is another America as well: An America that was built not on fear but on hope. An America that looks across the bridge and sees not danger but possibility. An America that is inclusive, projects optimism and is built on dreams.
George Washington embodied that spirit of hope when he said, “The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent and respectable stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions.”
President Reagan similarly said this country’s doors were “open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here… still a beacon… a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.”
Neither hope nor fear are reflections of the reality we live in. Rather, hope and fear both anticipate what the future will be. Fear is our darkest, most pessimistic view of that future. Ironically, fear grows out of our love of and comfort with what we have now and our imagining that we will lose it. But that loss is based on a what-if and is no more real than the optimistic projections of a hopeful future.
The difference is that fear is stifling. It prevents us from taking the risks necessary for growth. It shuts us down and closes us off from people and opportunities. Hope, on the other hand, opens us up to a world of possibilities. It encourages us to dream and then to take the risks and do the work to make those dreams come true.
It was May 12, 1948. Ten of thirteen members of the Zionist Provisional Government were gathered in Tel Aviv. Golda Meir had just returned from a secret visit to King Hussein in Jordan. She passed a scribbled note across the table to Ben Gurion, which said: “there will be war.”
Moshe Sharett shared that Secretary of State George Marshall preferred they delay declaring Statehood and instead declare a three-month truce. Marshall feared that a declaration of statehood would lead to an all-out regional war. Such a war would be damaging to America’s interests and catastrophic for the Zionists. If the Zionists ignored calls for a ceasefire, Marshall said, there would be no U.S. support.
Acting Commander Yigal Yadin and acting chief of staff Yisrael Galili spoke next. The Jewish army was too few in number, with less than a thousand men to defend the entire south. They were poorly trained and lacking vital equipment. Thirty to forty percent of the Haganah units were not yet armed. They had no fighter aircraft and virtually no cannons. The troops’ morale was low and they were fatigued from fighting since partition. Yadin and Galili questioned whether they could survive a multi-front war.
Now it was Ben Gurion’s turn to speak. He did not question the facts as presented, but he made clear where he stood. The ceasefire was a trap. The war would be no easier to fight in three months. A ceasefire risked turning into a constantly renewing extension of the British Mandate.
No, said Ben Gurion. We will declare Declaring statehood. We will fight to defend our country, and we will win. Ben Gurion said that declaring statehood would allow them to tap into their greatest resource: supporters abroad who would smuggle weapons in to the Haganah once the British departed. It would also open the gates of immigration, increasing needed manpower.
It was a daring vision. It was also an improbable one. Ben Gurion held a weak hand. Logic dictated that the others were right. The risks of failure were too great. Yet Ben Gurion’s hopeful vision was victorious over fear on that day. Because Ben Gurion chose hope over fear, two days later the Jewish State was born.
I have been there more than a dozen times, but I still get goose bumps every time I stand in Independence Hall in Tel Aviv and hear David Ben Gurion’s Declaration of the Jewish State, and then rise to the orchestra’s playing of Hatikvah.
Hatikvah: “The Hope.” It is hope that brought the Jewish State into being for the first time in two thousand years. Israel only exists today because Ben Gurion was able to see across that very narrow bridge and let his vision guide him to the other side.
Yes, the whole world is a very narrow bridge. The main thing is not to be at all afraid. Whatever challenges you face in life, you can cross that bridge, if you let go of your fears and hold on to hope.