Tzedakah: Righteousness Is When People Give Money to the Poor. Kol Nidre Sermon 5784
As I mentioned in our Yom Kippur pamphlet, there is an overarching theme to my High Holy Day sermons. Like many rabbis, I was intimidated by the blank page until I read essays in Who by Fire, Who By Water, edited by Rabbi Dr. Lawrence A. Hoffman. Rabbi Dr. Hoffman edited the series My People’s Prayer Book, which covers the regular flow of prayers across a Jewish week. More recently, he edited a series called Prayers of Awe, about the prayers that are added to services during the High Holy Days. This book is about Un’Taneh Tokef, a piyut, a liturgical poem, that covers the unnerving idea that G!d is judging us at every moment and that whether we live or die in the coming year depends on whether we are judged worthy of life. Un’taneh Tokef is a weird prayer that on its surface seems to articulate everything that is easy to reject about Jewish theology. And yet, its primary message is that Teshuvah, Tefillah, and Tzedekah can lessen the decree.
So, on Rosh HaShanah I spoke about tefillah and teshuvah. My goal, always, is to encourage us to think deeply and consider the possibility that we have the possibility to grow and change every day.
Let us move on now to the third element of U’netaneh Tokef prayer. Those Hebrew words mean “And Let Us Acknowledge the Power.” We each contain deep power. Even those of us who feel overwhelmed by life. Even if we feel lonely and adrift. We are powerful beings on a journey towards self actualization.
Our power is strongest when we allow ourselves to hold onto our identities loosely and open ourselves up to the possibility of change. When we are strongly invested in a single identity, or a single philosophy, then we enslave ourselves. Allow me to provide myself as an example of how problematic our definitions of self can be.
Let’s take a journey through my personal understanding of Tzedekah, righteousness. First, I’ll tell you about how I used to understand righteousness. Then, I’ll tell you about the life changing power of chevruta, of studying with a single person and learning Torah through dialog. Finally, I’ll explain my understanding of tzedekah on the other side of that chevruta experience.
In my early years, I believed completely in the importance of the public sector. I believe in government. I believe the public sector should be responsible for supporting basic human needs. I also believe the public sector should work cooperatively for the benefit of all humans. These are the reasons I became an activist. Unfortunately, the longer I was an activist, the angrier I became.
Judaism saved my life. It saved me from my anger. It saved me from the weight of my political convictions. I came to understand that my activism calcified me and pushed me to take a defensive position in most human interactions. One of the most transformative aspects of Judaism is sinking into chevruta, studying Jewish texts with one other person.
And last year, I started meeting with Ben Stonehouse, who happened to have the ending of the Book of Leviticus, the B’har / B’chukotai Torah portion for his Bar Mitzvah.
On an intellectual level, it was the study I did with Ben Stonehouse that truly rattled me. You see, one of the themes rabbis have focused on with this portion is the obligation to give tzedakah.
What I really appreciated about Ben is that he stopped me every time we read a word he didn’t understand and asked me to define it. It was also in chevruta with Ben that I finally came to appreciate the chevruta approach to learning. It’s about being willing to read and re-read a text so that both people can internalize its meaning and come to their own conclusions about it. This was a truly profound experience.
The meditation on tzedakah that we did forced me to confront the reality of the Jewish worldview. Before the modern concept of state, all we had were our communities. And no one really wanted to consider Jews part of their community. So, Jews had to self-organize. We had our own legal system and our own social service system.
In the Hebrew Bible, and in Jewish history, Jews have a practical relationship to economic reality. Slavery and its cousin, indentured servitude, were part of the economic reality in Biblical times, so the Hebrew Bible includes rules concerning those issues. Similarly, there have always been rich and poor people. The classical Jewish position is for the entire community to support the each other – even poor people are expected to give tzedakah.
Throughout our history, Jews have been used as pawns by political rulers. Often, we were not allowed to be farmers and forced to be both money lenders and tax collectors for the ruling family. When rulers could no longer pay their debt to their local Jews, they threw them out – all of the Jews, not just the ones they owed money to. That is part of the reason Jews migrated across Europe so much in the Middle Ages.
It is no accident that Karl Marx was born into a Jewish family that converted to Christianity.
Ben reminded me of our history when he taught me about tzedakah. The key aspect of tzedakah that we forget is how different it is from the Christian idea of charity. Tzedakah is our financial obligation to our community – both collectively and to individuals who are hungry, without homes, without healthcare, or otherwise in need of financial support. We are obligated to provide financial support to our fellow human beings because we are all made in the image of G!d. Charity implies that we are going beyond what is required of us. Or that the poor must be grateful for the financial aid they receive.
In fact, we should be grateful for the opportunity to help alleviate suffering. We who benefit from the current economic system must use our financial means to help our fellow human beings.
We are also obligated to support our communal institutions. This is gemilut chasidim, acts of lovingkindness, which is connected to, though distinct from, our obligation to the poor, our obligation to provide tzedakah. Jewish culture places an emphasis on supporting both our communal institutions and the poor within society. And traditionally, these financial obligations have first and foremost been towards our Jewish community.
Yet, I also fully recognize that part of the reason for the decline in organized Judaism is the incredibly high cost of doing Jewish.
I get it. I really do.
I actually toured a Jewish preschool that told me I didn’t qualify for reduced tuition because I was a full-time rabbinical student. If I was earning a salary, I’d get a reduced rate for my child. Make it make sense.
Let’s continue with that strangely awkward concept that helps make society run – money. Money is needed to pay religious school teachers and our religious school director to create a learning community that prioritizes the individual souls who walk into our synagogue and help them flourish into their authentic selves.
Money is needed to pay our office administrator, who has done the Herculean task of also being our High Holy Day Coordinator, in addition to our facilities manager, database coordinator, and bookkeeper.
Money is needed to take care of this sweet facility, which is over 40 years old with all the material upkeep that involves.
And yes, money is needed for my own salary. And for whatever funds we can allocate towards musical prayer leadership. As we all know, our time together has been intensely elevated by our guest shaliach tzibur, Cantor Star Trompeter.
Plus, as most of us are residents of the Bay Area, we know that our fellow Californians need financial support. That’s why we need to support the Alameda Food Bank and local food banks wherever we live because no human should go to bed hungry.
Whether you call it gemilut chasidim or tzedakah or charity, remember that our financial support of the greater community binds us to the wider world and allows us to be strengthened by living in community.
This is the tzedakah lesson that Ben Stonehouse taught me. Thank you, Ben.
May we all have a good final sealing. G’mar Chatimah Tovah.
Sermon delivered to Temple Israel of Alameda on Kol Nidre, 5784.
Photo by Dương Nhân.