Rosh Hashanah Day 2, 5783 ~ Sept. 27, 202

A lonely frog called a psychic hotline.  The psychic advisor told him "You will meet a beautiful young woman who will want to learn all about you”.  "Where will I meet her?" he asked. "Down by the old mill stream?" "No," she said. "In biology class."

There seems to be a similar story line in our Torah reading for this morning. And that story line is one that is familiar to us in the words of the folk song “Dona:” Calves are easily bound and slaughtered, never knowing the reason why.” Or as Professer Cozmo, in July, offered his understanding of fate in the comic strip  “Shoe.” In his restaurant review of the Karma Café, he writes: “There was no menu. I just accepted what was coming to me.”

Like others, I  wonder not only why God commanded Abraham to take his son, his favorite son, to the land of Moriah- ultimately to sacrifice him upon an altar, but why God waited 37 years to do so? The Torah states, God was testing Abraham in his faith of God.   Did Abraham, at first fail the test of faith, because he did not ask the question of why, whereas with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham volleyed with God, challenging God’s actions?  God may have been testing Abraham, but, was it really regarding faith? Or, was there some other reason for the late-in-life test?

Fifty years after the Munich Massacre during the Olympics, I remain as haunted by the mournful tears of ABC commentator Jim McKay as I was that day.  On television, we saw  in real time  as the helicopter - filled with the hostaged Israeli athletes and their Palestinian captors  began to ascend into the sky. We witnessed the smoke and the fire as this helicopter was blown up in the air.  I can still clearly hear Jim McKay’s tearful words” “They are all gone”.

There is a concept  in psychology from the late 70’s called a “flashbulb memory”, “ in which one recalls in especially vivid detail a memory of learning something surprising and/or traumatic.” My flashbulb memory begins with the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur war and continues to the Achille Lauro.  To this day, some of the questions that I ask or incidents that trouble me, revolve around events that are shaped by a flash of those memories. I wonder how  my identity as a teenager and a Jew was  not only altered, but transformed  due to witnessing this aggression on Israelis and Israel on live TV, but other quite similar incidents with the many hijackings of airplanes and cruise ships by Palestinian terrorists.

I read in a rabbinic fact sheet that cited  the Palestinian Media Watch from Israel  as its source that  “The Munich Massacre provided the Palestinian cause a captive global audience but the brutal and traumatizing attack did nothing to advance peace then or now. The Palestinian Authority still praises the terrorist atrocity as a “quality operation” in the Palestinian narrative and even named schools after the terrorists. The terrorists presented “the most spectacular aspects of pride, glory and loyalty.”  The Palestinian Authority today continues to  revere  “the planners as “heroes” and role models.”   PA chairman Abbas recently refused to condemn the massacre during a press conference with the German chancellor in Germany, an attack he is accused of financing and planning.

That flashbulb memory shapes how I respond to the anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic statements and acts that cover our news on a daily basis. It enlightens  why when I try to  find meaning in those events,  there is none. 

 It is well known that “German leaders often refer to their special responsibility for helping to safeguard the Jewish state and provides defense armaments to Israel.”  How then, can one accept the fact that it took fifty years and a boycott of the 50^th anniversary commemorations by the families of the victims and by Israel’s President Isaac Herzog,  for the German government  to finally come to a resolution on the financial claims of the families of the victims of the Munich Massacre, to release files with information regarding the event and to offer an apology for the security lapses that took place at the 1972 Olympics?

As we learned on Yom HaShoah from the German high school students who participated in  the JFEC program, anti-Semitism is on the rise once again. Even though this group of students joined a class to gain knowledge of  the Shoah, they were ultimately aware that several of their classmates aligned themselves with antisemitic tendencies, and this was a difficult tightrope to walk. As a matter of fact, a recent German poll revealed “that only a third of Germans think Germany has “a special responsibility for the Jewish people” and a third equated Israel’s treatment of Palestinians with the Nazis behavior against Jews!” And that thought is disturbing and one that I simply cannot accept, not in Germany, and not here in America!

I cannot accept the answer that such terror committed by Palestinian terrorists back then or Hamas  and Palestinian terrorists today should just be accepted as a test of faith for Israelis.  As Hamas and the Palestinians continue to not only volley missiles into Israeli settlements, but also continue to attack within Israel itself, I am disturbed by so many in the world’s acceptance of these actions, as defending their rights, versus aggressors .  עד מתי, up “until when”, or “when will” the world remind the Palestinian’s and Hamas, that they are the aggressors in this story? That they are the ones who continue to propel Nasser’s’ plan of “pushing the Jews into the sea” as being the  singular answer? And when will those who believe they have the answer, and accuse Israel come to the truth that  Israel seeks peace; not war and not a continued military hold on the Palestinian territory or Gaza strip; just a real peace.

Or might it be a whole different mindset and question which the Palestinians face: that they are victims of their own jealousy and realization of what their own state could have become? Instead of sitting in the shetachim, playing out the role of victims, and instead of creating the Boycott and Divest Movement around the world, targeting Israel as the aggressor, they imagine as they look at Israel’s successes where they could have been now; and are not able to change their ideology because then they would be looked at by their own as failures. Instead, their economy languishes and their people live in poverty. And, as a result, they continue to live in the falsehoods now passed on to the next generation as well! Just this past week, the Palestinians and their supporters expressed outrage, criticizing Marvel  of buying into Zionist propaganda as Israeli actress Shira Haas has been cast to play Sabra, a mutant Israeli police officer-turned-Mossad agent, in the next installment of the “Captain America” franchise.  Imagine, if instead of demonizing every Israeli and Jew in the world, they would reimagine their lives and their world as several Arab countries have done, building bridges of peace with Israel.

And I ask you this: as Jews and supporters of Eretz Yisrael, can we truly trust any nuclear deal with Iran, in relationship to both the current and future safety of Israel and Israelis?

When I went back into the Torah reading, I noticed that at one point, as Abraham and Isaac are walking, carrying the provisions for the sacrifice, Isaac turns to his father and begins to speak.   He says “Dad, we have the wood, we have the fire, but we do not have the sheep for slaughter. Where is it?” For the first time in 37 years of life, a conversation between Abraham and Isaac is recorded in the Torah. It is a one-line question. 

That question provides Abraham with a totally different view of his son; no longer is his son content with merely working in the family business; no longer is he just a simple shepherd who doesn’t understand life. Abraham finally realizes that his son is a thoughtful man who understands and asks questions. Isaac has transformed from the Simple son, to the Wise son and through this transformation, has established himself to his father in a different light.  In asking this question, Isaac takes hold of the situation. In that instance, Isaac realized that while he might not have total control of his own fate, his faith allows him to question his father and not follow blindly.   Ultimately, this pushes Abraham to question what he is about to do.   In a similar fashion, I am aware that I am not sufficiently learned in all of the political aspects of the world. Similar to Isaac,  I can only ask the questions.

Imagine how many mothers in Ukraine had to find an answer for their children on why daddy was staying behind, and why they were fleeing across the border! Misha, a non-verbal teen with Down’s Syndrome, didn’t understand why his family had to flee Mariupol, Ukraine this year.  Similar to Isaac, Misha  too asked his mother: “why?”  Most mothers in this situation might have responded in the way that I can only portray in Hebrew. The child asks: “למה” … “why?” And the traditional אמא responds: “ככה”,  “that is just the way it is.” But, that is not how Misha’s mother responded.  “To placate him, his mother told him they were traveling to meet John Cena.” John Cena, the WWE wrestler, actor, and former rapper, was overwhelmed by Misha’s story, so “he went to Amsterdam to oblige.” Brilliant answer to not only Misha, but to our Torah reading as well.

I think that the story of the binding of Isaac provides us with a better understanding of what might be the right answer: “Dad we have the wood and the fire, but where is the lamb?” Abraham’s answer reveals that he finally understands…he doesn’t say you are the lamb, he says: אדני יראה  “God will show us.” Most of us interpret Abraham’s answer to mean “don’t worry, son, God will show us the sheep!” But as I read it, Abraham is using the word “yirah,” not that God will show us, but God will have faith in us!” We simply need to have the “yirah,” the faith in witnessing the outcome…all it takes is faith.  It might mean “I hear you and I am hoping that something will happen, that will allow us to have power over this tragic moment!”  And, at the end of the story, it does come to pass when Abraham finally hears a voice calling out to him: “Abraham, Abraham” and he ceases from lowering the knife into his son. He finally understands.

But I am not certain that yirah, faith, today is enough. But starting with a question, that is the beginning.

As we are witness to the many akeidot, the tragic events that happen in our world today,   Isaac’s question remains  our voice of  not only disbelief,  but  of how to maintain  faith in our own personal world and our world itself today. 

Amanda Gorman, provides a meaningful response, through the eyes of a young adult  in a modern world: 

Everything hurts,
Our hearts shadowed and strange,
Minds made muddied and mute.
We carry tragedy, terrifying and true.
And yet none of it is new;
We knew it as home,
As horror,
As heritage.
Even our children
Cannot be children,
Cannot be.

Everything hurts.
It’s a hard time to be alive,
And even harder to stay that way.
We’re burdened to live out these days,
While at the same time, blessed to outlive them.

This alarm is how we know
We must be altered —
That we must differ or die,
That we must triumph or try.
Thus while hate cannot be terminated,
It can be transformed
Into a love that lets us live.

May we not just grieve, but give:
May we not just ache, but act;
May our signed right to bear arms
Never blind our sight from shared harm;
May we choose our children over chaos.
May another innocent never be lost.

Maybe everything hurts,
Our hearts shadowed & strange.
But only when everything hurts
May everything change.

And how does our story in the Torah end? Amanda Gorman  provides us with an answer for our world today:  “with another innocent never lost….”  Abraham finds the answer with  the ram in the thicket.  The Midrash depicts that  Abraham takes the ram’s horn, places it to his lips to herald the truths that the world needed to understand. The tekiah opens our minds to listen and to explore, to find an answer. The three notes of the sh’varim, express our fears; the staccato of the teruah, expresses our understanding of the possibility, and the tekiah gedolah, provides us with  hope: a hope  that our flashbulb memories can be transformed from tragedy to faith in our own personal  world and hopefully to humanity and the future.   It calls out to faith, not in a blind fashion, but in a responsible way, asking for answers that are real and truthful. It is for that reason that we continue to recite the words of the Aleinu, that provides us with hope. It is not only the melody, but the title of the Israeli national anthem, Hatkivah, The Quest for Hope, that has given meaning to the future of Eretz Yisrael,  the land of Israel, and Medinat Yisrael,  the State of Israel. It provides us with the faith, that Adonai Yireh, Adonai will provide us with the answer.

While this is not an answer to the global tests of faith that we face,   similar to Isaac, maybe simply asking the question, might be enough as a continued beginning... for it reflects the human qualities of not only frustration, but the hope that אדני יראה … Adonai will have faith in us, and we in God. And maybe, in humanity as well.  That is the message that the story of Akeidat Yitzchak   the binding of Isaac  conveys for us on this day:  We need to ask the question of faith in our world and in mankind.

And the answer…let us pray that just as the sound of the shofar was heard at Mt. Sinai, heralding a new vision of values, and just as the shofar is blown at time of trouble, one that is relevant and profound in our concern for the welfare of so many around the globe today…hopefully our world can hear that call of a new reality as well too for a  Messianic age when the shofar will resonate throughout the world with a Shana Tova.