October 5th: Forgiving Abraham

The following is a transcript of the Sermon given on Rosh Hashanah morning by Austin Zoot at his student pulpit in Kokomo, Indiana.

We just read olne of the most intriguing passages of the Hebrew Bible, the Akedah, or the Binding of Isaac. In this episode, Abraham is told to take Isaac, his son, and sacrifice him before God. So the next day, Abraham gets to work. They journey to Mount Moriah, where Abraham binds Isaac and begins to ritual of sacrifice, only to be stopped by an angel of God, telling him that he has demonstrated his faith and that Isaac is not actually to be sacrificed.

When I was in Sunday school as a child, we discussed this narrative as the ultimate test of faith. Abraham believed so completely in the notion that God would look out for him and for his family that he was willing to do whatever he was asked, regardless of the gravity of the situation. Imagine that for a moment: a man who was willing to sacrifice his only son to a God who had promised him offspring as numerous as the stars.

This level of faith, unyielding and blind faith, seems foreign to many of us. And that’s because it should. A willingness to throw away even one’s own family for a belief in God is something that, today, would seem outrageous, too dramatic to be stomached comfortably. And there is evidence that while God was pleased with Abraham’s faith, God was also disturbed by it. According to the text, this was the last time that Abraham and God conversed, and the divine relationship passed to Isaac from that moment on. God asked Abraham to do something as a test, and seems almost disturbed by Abraham’s willingness to follow through with it.

What are we supposed to do with this? Abraham is our very first patriarch, a figure of honor and respect from which all of Jewish tradition derives. What do we do with a flawed patriarch? How do we come to terms with an individual who we know has flaws, who we know has tendencies of extremism, and yet is supposed to be a role model for us?

First, we are asked to look at what it means to be asked for actions based on faith. During the High Holidays, a time when we talk about who shall live, who shall die, who will be inscribed in the Book of Life, it is easy to say that blind faith is the way to go. Let go of the wheel and let God take over, so to speak. And yet, this story tells us to stop, to reconsider. We are told that, in this instance, Abraham’s willingness to do what is asked of him is acknowledged with a promise for a rich and blessed future, but it also comes with it the departure of God’s connection, a loss of direct communication with the almighty. The Torah is, in essence, warning us about the potential ramifications of what a total and blind commitment to divine decree can lead to if it goes unchecked by reason and understanding of context.

This is especially complicated when we take a look at an earlier story in the Bible. When God tells Abraham that he is about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham argues with God, negotiating exactly how many good people need to be present in the cities in order for God to spare them from destruction. In this case, Abraham isn’t blindly trusting in God’s decree; he is demanding that God do what is right, even if that means being willing to put his own standing as God’s chosen emissary at stake. Why is it that Abraham was so willing to compromise in one narrative, while so singularly focused in another?

We read this text on Rosh Hashanah for a number of reasons. One is to show us what it means to have faith in God’s plan, to know that, as we are about to be inscribed in the book of Life, that there is some notion of faith in what God has assigned to us. Another is the notion of coming to terms with a flawed character in our lives. During the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we set out to ask forgiveness from those in our lives against whom we have sinned, those who we have hurt and those who we have not fully appreciated. At the same time, we are asked to forgive others, allowing them the full repentance that we ourselves seek in our own work to be better than we were a year ago.

In that regard, Abraham continues to be a role model for us, although in a decidedly different way. Abraham as a flawed character allows us to see what it means to both be the best we can be, as well as to struggle in certain areas. We are able to see Abraham in a moment of faith, doing what God has asked him to do without question and without compromise. That is a huge act of commitment, and a worthy virtue for us to embody. And yet, his unyielding determination, and his refusal in that moment to look thoughtfully at the consequences of the matter show to us the humanity of our ancestors, of our leaders, and to remind us that if Abraham was able to make this kind of mistake, then certainly we, too, may err and make a full return to goodness.

As we begin the ten days of awe, we first are asked to forgive Abraham for his blind faith. We see what it means to believe in God, what it means to be willing to go to great lengths to do what is asked of us, and yet we are forced to come to terms with what happens when we get carried away, when we go too far in our pursuit of our own selfish desires. Once we have started the process with Abraham, we turn our attention to those in our own lives, those far more complicated situations of virtue and sin.

It can be difficult to forgive those in our lives who have made mistakes. We are hurt, we are angry, we are struggling to figure out how to find those values of forgiveness and understanding in ourselves. Sometimes it is loved ones who hurt us. Sometimes, we struggle to forgive ourselves, to let ourselves off the hook for the mistakes we have made. The Torah gives us Abraham as a guide, a model by which we are to understand our own inclination to extreme behavior. If we have it within ourselves to forgive our patriarch for his actions, and still see the virtue in him, then so too must we be able to find within ourselves the values and good intentions that sometimes lead us to misdeeds and mistakes.

Over the next ten days, it is our responsibility to go through our lives and take stock of the moments where we missed the mark. We are meant to improve ourselves as people, to ensure that we learn something from where we messed up, and to find the places where we can improve ourselves the next time around. But I am not a believer in the wrath of God, the notion that humans are inherently sinners. I’m not a believer in T’shuvah as a forced admission of guilt. It is, rather, an opportunity, a chance to look back and discover parts of ourselves that we like, and that we cherish, and to ensure that our misdeeds do not overshadow the good things that we do for ourselves and for the world.

The Torah portion gives us the chance to see this in action. We are able to see what happens when our virtues go to extremes, to see when we go beyond what is healthy in terms of devotion. It helps us to establish the line, to learn where goodness begins and ends. And, as a result, it also teaches us a valuable lesson about what it means to forgive, to overcome character flaws and continue to serve as a role model, as a leader. If we can learn this morning from Abraham, learn to forgive him and to understand him, we have already begun the process of forgiving one another and ourselves.

Shana Tova.

April 6th: Flooding the Box Office

“Noah was in his generations a man righteous and wholehearted.”

This is how the Bible introduces us to Noah, the biblical character who has made his debut on the silver screen.

Dan Aronofsky’s spin on the original zookeeper has exploded at the box office, making $44 million in the first weekend. The film has also received criticism from many in the religious right for its seeming departure from the biblical text, in favor of a more theatrical, dramatic telling.

The beauty of the film, though, is that it in no way changed any component of the text. Another reading of the biblical account backs up the idea that, while many pieces were added, and interpreted, there was nothing that was truly changed or desecrated.

A true telling of the biblical account would lack the drama necessary for a full-length feature film. Aronofsky knew that, so rather than dragging out the pieces that already exists, he worked to add pieces that would add to the moral and ethical principles that are paramount to the story, while maintaining the themes that make the biblical tale as significant as it is.

The central theme of Aronofsky’s version of Noah is the conflict associated with being asked to be the representative of mankind. How does a single individual hold the power, knowing that all other humans will die? How does that person fail to do anything to save the lives of those doomed to drown in the floods of God’s wrath?

The Noah of the movie was forced, in his interpretation of his task, to make some decisions that were fundamentally oppositional to his own ideals, but were what he believed was expected of him. Throughout the film, the embodiment of this challenge is a focal point, and the character is depicted as a flawed and tormented man. His dedication to the task at hand gets in the way of his relationships with members of his family, as well as his ability to find meaning in his own existence.

This is where the Biblical telling holds a subtlety that is so beautiful, and so paramount to our understanding of Noah as the complex individual that Russell Crowe portrays him to be. Noah was, in the first line of his introduction, described as a righteous man “in his generations.” There is an additional context. This surfaces in the telling of Abraham’s story, when Abraham, rather than allowing Sodom and Gomorrah to be annihilated, argues with God, begging for mercy for the two towns. How could Noah be righteous when he also did nothing to save the lives of those around him, as his counterpart several years down the road was able to do?

The greatest struggle with any Biblical story is the attempt for translation into everyday life. How can we, as 21st century people, take these ancient words and apply them to the difficulties we face in our world?

The concept of righteousness is one that we all strive for every day. We look for ways to make a difference in the world, to end the suffering and pain that is all-too close at hand. Yet, we also feel powerless, as if we cannot truly make the world any better. Things feel so screwed up in such fundamental ways, that it can feel too immense, too daunting to ever make a real difference.

This is where our interpretation of Noah has something to teach us. Noah was by no means perfect. He is a good man with a caveat. That caveat, though, doesn’t take away from his goodness. It puts his goodness in a context; Noah did the best he could in the environment which he was assigned. Noah was asked to do a nearly impossible task, and was able to do what he could to accomplish it.

We, too, must strive to be “righteous in our generations.” We will be judged by history not for our ability to make revolutionary changes to our social structure, but by the incremental advancements we can make, and our attempts to do what we can.

One of the most popularly-cited Jewish ethical texts is Pirkei Avot’s comment “It is not upon you to finish the work, nor are you free to desist from it.” The task of making the world better is too immense to fall on the shoulders of any one of us. Yet, it is through our ability to be good people within the context of our abilities that we are able to be the Noah of our generation: the righteous man, who did what he could with what he was given.