All You Need in Life is a Wishbone, a Jawbone and a Backbone

Rabbi Stephen Weiss

Rosh Hashanah 2013

Well I am here to tell you today, each one of us has these three bones, and you better not put them down, because the world still needs you to use them.

Two weeks ago I had the privilege of speaking at the city-wide commemoration of the 1963 March for Freedom and Jobs. It was a deeply moving experience for me, as the African-American community and their friends and supporters gathered to celebrate a half century of progress in civil rights, and to commit themselves to marching forward together toward the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of the “Beloved Community,” in which we would be judged not be the color of our skin but by the content of our character.

I was especially inspired that evening by the words of Ohio State Senator Nina Turner. Senator Turner said that her grandmother taught her that to get along in this world all you need are three things: a wishbone, a jawbone and a backbone.

That’s right: a wishbone, a jawbone and a backbone. A wishbone so you can dream, because, as Senator Turner said, “You cannot make your dreams come true if you don’t have a dream in the first place.” A jawbone because if you believe in something you have to speak out about it. You have to be willing even to speak truth to power. And a backbone because the road to fulfilling any dream is hard and has many setbacks. If you are going to reach the Promised Land you have to be willing to persevere no matter what obstacles you face.

When I heard Senator Turner’s words, I knew in that instant that her premise would form the basis of my words to you today. Why? Because if there is anyone who exemplifies those three ideas, it is our hero today.

Abraham had a wishbone. He had a vision of a faith founded on belief in the one true God and the realization that we are all children of that one God and so part of a universal fellowship. He also had a dream of a nation devoted to serving that God, living in its own land, living a life guided by the principles of love and justice.

Abraham had a jawbone. He and Sarah spread the word of their new faith and gathered many souls under their tent as part of a covenanted community. But Abraham did not just use his jawbone to attract followers, he used it to challenge as well, asking – when God told him of his plans to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah – will not the Judge of the earth do justly? Will he destroy the innocent with the wicked? Because of Abraham’s jawbone, lot and his family are saved.

And Abraham had a backbone. He and Sarah lived a harsh life. Not only does God test him with the command to offer up Isaac, the sages teach this was only one of ten tests that Abraham underwent, ten trials that stretched his faith to the limit. In his many tests, Abraham becomes the paradigm of the wandering and oppression that four thousand years of ancestors will endure. And yet through it all Abraham never lost faith.

It was Martin Luther King, Jr. that Senator Turner was talking about that night. Dr. King most definitely had a wishbone, a jawbone and a backbone. He had a dream of a better America built on racial equality and opportunity, and he became that dream’s most eloquent and impassioned spokesman. Watching Lee Daniel’s The Butler recently, with its disturbing news-reel clips of the challenges blacks and those fighting for civil rights faced – the arrests, degradation and violence – I was reminded how much backbone it took for those who stood with Dr. King to achieve the gains we celebrate today.

I listened with pride as my colleague and friend Reverend Tony Minor, one of the organizers of the March commemoration, spoke of the amazing partnership between Jews and blacks that made the civil rights movement possible. He said to his African-American friends, “We could not have done it alone.” Indeed by some estimates, fully half of the whites present at the March on Washington were Jewish. We all are familiar with the three young men, two of them Jewish – Andrew Goodman and Mickey Schwermer—who went to Mississippi to register black voters and were shot at close range by the Ku Klux Klan. We have all heard the famous words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel who said that when he marched side by side with Dr. King in Selma he “felt like his feet were praying,” but we may be less familiar with the groups of rabbis who marched in St. Augustine Florida and elsewhere, and the countless Jews who marched, registered voters, rode freedom busses, protested and in a myriad of other ways stood shoulder to shoulder with our African-American brothers and sisters. The struggle for civil rights in this country awakened in us a renewed consciousness of our sacred obligation to answer the prophetic call to build a just society, and we answered that call with a wishbone, a jawbone and a backbone.

I want to share with you a story of another individual who had a wishbone, a jawbone and a backbone. It is an extraordinary story I learned from my colleague and friend, Rabbi Ed Feinstein. I will tell you the story in his words:

The story begins on “November 29, 1947, when the United States supported the UN resolution calling for the partition of Palestine and the creation of a Jewish state. Within six months, on May 14, 1948, the British were scheduled to leave Palestine.

“During those six months, pressure mounted within the US government against American recognition of the new Jewish state. The revered General George Marshall, the Secretary of State, and the most famous public figure in the US, warned President Truman that if he recognized the new Jewish state, Marshall would resign and campaign against him. He feared that recognition would anger Arab states and jeopardize oil supplies. Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal argued that the Jewish state would need the protection of 160,000 American troops. Forrestal argued that the US should turn Palestine over to the United Nations to govern as a trustee. Truman felt compassion for Holocaust survivors still in European camps and he had a reverence for Biblical history. But under the immense pressure, Truman relented. And the US gave up its plan to support the Jewish state, effectively rendering Israel stillborn.

“The Zionist movement sent every envoy, pulled every string, exerted every effort to change the President’s mind. Having remained too silent, during the Holocaust, Jewish leaders would not to sit quietly while this opportunity passed. Senators, diplomats, community leaders came to meet the President. But Truman was the kind of man when pushed, became only more stubborn. He wrote in his diaries, ‘You cannot satisfy the Jews! The Jews have no sense of proportion, nor do they have any judgment on world affairs…The Jews, I find, are very very selfish.’

“Harry Truman wasn’t overtly anti-Semitic. True, his wife Bess would let no Jewish person into their home. Back home in Independence, Missouri, he had lived next door to a Jewish family, the Viners, and Harry often served as the family Shabbos goy. A simple, uneducated man, Harry Truman absorbed the cultural attitudes of the American heartland and he carried a chip on his shoulder against the powerful, the well-connected and the arrogant. The more political pressure the Zionist movement exerted, the more he resisted, until he banned all Zionist representative from the White House. Chaim Weitzman, the great Zionist leader, came to New York to see the President, but Truman refused to see him.”

Enter Eddie Jacobson. “During the First World War, Private Eddie Jacobson had been the clerk for Lieutenant Harry Truman. After the war, they went into business together, in a haberdashery shop in Kansas City. They remained drinking buddies and played poker whenever Truman visited Kansas City. [At the urgent request of Zionist leaders], Jacobson wired the President: ‘I have asked very little in the way of favors during all our years of friendship, but I am begging you to see Dr Weitzman.’ The President responded that the Palestine situation was unsolvable. Refusing to give up, Jacobson came uninvited to Washington on March 13, 1947, to talk with the President personally.

“After waiting some hours, Truman called him into the Oval Office with the warning, ‘Eddie, I know what you are here for, and the answer is no.’ When Jacobson asked him to reconsider, Truman exploded in a tirade against the ‘Eastern Jews’ who slandered and libeled him. He didn’t want to discuss Jews or Arabs or the British; let the UN take care of it! Jacobson was stunned. He had nothing to say.

“On Truman’s desk sat a replica of the courthouse statue in Jackson County, Missouri. Improvising, Jacobson said, ‘Harry, all your life, you have had a hero. You are probably the best-read man in America on the life of Andrew Jackson. Well, Harry, I too have a hero—a man I never met, but who is, I think, the greatest Jew who ever lived … Chaim Weizmann. He is a very sick man … but he traveled thousands of miles just to see you … And now you’re putting him off. This isn’t like you, Harry.’”

“Deep in thought, Truman drummed his desktop, then swiveled in his chair to gaze at the South Lawn of the White House. For what seemed ‘like centuries,’ Eddie held his breath. Then the president spun back around and uttered the most ‘endearing’ words Jacobson had ever heard him speak: ‘You win, you bald-headed son-of-a —— ! I will see him.’

“On Thursday, March 18, after dark, Chaim Weizmann was slipped into the Oval Office. After their conversation, Truman assured Weizmann that America would follow through with its recognition of the new Jewish state. On Friday evening, May 14, 1948, David Ben Gurion read Israel’s declaration of independence, establishing the Jewish state. Eleven minutes later, by order of the President, the United States of America recognized Israel’s independence. Asked later why he resisted his own State Department, Truman responded, ‘the ultimate test of a presidential decision is not whether it’s popular at the time, but whether it’s right. If its right, make it, and let the popular part take care of itself.’”

An astounding story. If Eddie Jacobson didn’t have a wishbone, a jawbone and a backbone, the US might not have recognized Israel. How very different things might have been. As with Martin Luther King and civil rights, so too there might not be a strong vibrant Israel today if not for Eddie Jacobson.

Well I am here to tell you today, each one of us has these three bones, and you better not put them down, because the world still needs you to use them. The march for full civil rights for all citizens in this country is far from complete. Though great strides have been made, there is still tremendous racial inequality in this country. We cannot afford to let go of our dreams of a better society. We cannot afford to lose our voice. We cannot afford to become weary. Too much depends on us.

And the same is true regarding Israel. As we look back over the past 65 years, there is much to celebrate. Israel is a flourishing state, the region’s only democracy, an international center of innovation and business, a font of Jewish culture, a vibrant spiritual center nourishing our people. Our restored Biblical homeland has earned its place among the nations of the world. It has proved a vital refuge for Jews facing persecution and it has raised the standing Jews throughout the world wherever they might live.

But Israel still needs us to use those three bones. As with civil rights, our march for Israel is far from complete. We worry over the lack of progress in peace talks with the Palestinians, the meaning of the turmoil in Egypt and the presence of Al Qaeda in the Sinai. Hezbollah grows stronger, Syria’s civil war threatens to spill into Israel, Israelis await the possible fallout of an American attack, and Iran is perilously close to attaining nuclear weapons.  We must never lose sight of our dream of a secure Israel living in peace with its neighbors. It is vital that we, like Eddie Jacobson, speak up and demand that our elected officials support the Jewish State. Our enemies believe that they do not need to make peace, that they can wear us down, and so we need perseverance.

At the same time, we are witnessing struggles within the Israeli public as well. Haredim are still not fully integrated into Israeli society, Women still do not have the freedom to worship as they see fit, with Tallit, tefillin and Torah if they desire at the kotel. Liberal movements of Judaism are still denied formal recognition.

Just as for America so too for Israel, the Jew should be able to say, as Senator Carl Schurz famously did, “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.” Love of Zion does not require that we blind ourselves to Israel’s shortcomings. On the contrary, it demands of us that we work to help our sacred homeland be the light unto the nations declared by the prophets.

Hold on to your dreams. Your dreams for a better America, your dreams for a better, more secure Israel living in peace. There may be times when we may feel overwhelmed by the challenges we face, times we feel those dreams cannot be achieved. But they can. Just ask Martin King. Ask Eddie Jacobson. All you have to do is to dream, to speak up, stand up and persevere.  All you need is… a wishbone, a jawbone and a backbone.