Rabbi Joshua Hoffman Sermons

Rosh Hashana - 2009, 5770 by Rabbi Joshua Hoffman

When the woman left and I closed my office door I finally began to understand. Moments earlier, I listened carefully as the she told of her family’s journey from another country, of her father’s tireless work to scrape together what was at first a meager existence. She smiled as she shared that after a few years they all watched a successful business flourish beyond their greatest imaginations. She and her siblings went to college and eventually one of the sons stayed with their father to run the operation. When he passed away a few years back, the family wanted to make sure that the business was sound and they invested the money in all kinds of ways - stocks, properties, even investing in the country they once left. There was more money, and more risks. Then the recession hit last year and they nearly lost it all. There just wasn’t enough business coming in and the creditors were banging down the doors. 

So many tears - I found it difficult to answer her. 

When one of us is in need, we help each other, right? What could I do? Should I pull out the checkbook? What amount could possibly compare to the millions, even billions that her family and so many other people have lost in just a matter of months? Her story was one of so many. I tried to offer comfort from our tradition. “We’ve been here before. We’ve struggled through the harshest of times.” But I was only speaking to the heart – words to ease the emotional struggle these difficult times evoke. I introduced her to the counseling resources in the community, even directed her to support through the Federation, but they are only resources that speak to the heart. The bank account speaks another language. As I closed the door, the sound of steel sliding against steel, the click in the lock that confirmed the separation between us – I in my office and she walking away with tears streaming down her face - I began to understand. 

There are doors closing everywhere. We’re just hoping, we’re just praying they’ll open up again sooner than later. The closing doors are found in the way we do business, how we build community, and even in our sense of self. The closing doors are in the bank account, where we believe our statement balance is a reflection of our achievement. The closing doors are the agonizing truths we accept as part of the world around us. These closing doors are part of the landscape and they are an eyesore – we just can’t stop looking. 

We’re staring at doors closing in the business world as organizations, once the cornerstones of our fiscal strength, are toppling around us. We talk about how disgusted we are when we hear the tale of a financial genius swindling billions of dollars from innocent investors, even from the foundations of Holocaust survivors. Or, we are utterly confounded when we hear of five Jewish men in New Jersey, given the most prestigious title in our community, rabbi, sully the reputation of all Jews around the world as they fall prey to a corrupt system and are complicit in unconscionable acts of corruption and deceit. We can chuckle at the ridiculous amounts of executive bonuses, chortle at the manner in which they are paid, and even express some disdain by the system that allows it. Are we really laughing? Are we really upset? 

We are also staring at doors closing in religious communities. An era Jewish institutions is coming to a close. The alphabet soup of Jewish institutional life was hit very hard in this economy, forcing us to seriously reconsider what our priorities are and will be for the next generation. At the same time, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll, close to fifty percent of young people are moving out of their faiths of birth, In many ways, it is as if inside the synagogue, we’ve got our doors wide open, but they seem like closed doors for so many others. Today, faith and meaning are freely chosen and rejected. In another generation there will appear to be no compelling reason to practice any religious tradition. 

We’re even staring at the closing doors on our own notions of success for too long now. In the words of the Jewish philanthropist Michael Steinhardt, we, as Jews and as individuals, suffer from, “the prevailing ethos…of ‘making it.’”(Contact, Spring 2009). I think we are shocked to consider that God wants us to be champions of financial markets, or that our lifetime achievement is rising to the top of the most prestigious law firms or corporations. But where have we shown that these achievements are not at the top of our values? It’s another closing door – where “making it” means making a living, and making a life is a pleasant, but unintended consequence. 

Thanks to Madoff and others, there are 64 billion doors that are closing now that aren’t opening again, no matter how hard we stare at them. But those closed doors are only seen when we speak in the language of the bank account. We need to add the language of the heart to the conversation too. 

“Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open.” Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone once said this. Aside from creating one of the single most important inventions in the history of humanity, Bell spent much of his life working with the deaf, including his famous deaf and blind student, Helen Keller. Perhaps it was with her when he said, “Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open.” That is what I realized in my office with the woman and so many other people struggling financially and emotionally this year. I have been staring at the closing doors and convincing my self it will get better sooner than later and we’ll all be okay once again. That’s bank account speak. 

We are all looking for guidance and answers on a daily basis. That is why understanding economics is a lot like having faith. (That is also why we laugh when we hear jokes like “Economists have successfully forecasted nine of the last five recessions!” Or, when we hear the pundits say, “It’s getting better...we just don’t know when.”) So let me give you some investment advice instead. Tonight - You are not going to hear me talk about market fluctuations, derivatives, BRIC countries, or comparative advantages, not only in the hopes of keeping you awake, but because these holy days offer the opportunity for us to share a deeper conversation, where the bank account and the heart speak as one. 

These are the holy days we begin looking at ourselves and the world anew. The time has come to remove our gaze from the closing doors of unmitigated greed and shameless self-promotion. From the closing doors of ways that even good, honest, business was once done, from the closing doors of ‘making it’ and our woes that more Jews aren’t Jewish enough. The time has come to see the open doors of an incredible time of greater human awareness, greater opportunities for communal growth, and for discovering the path to our greater selves. These are our open doors, and with open-door minds, we will begin to see them more clearly. 

With an open-door mind, you begin to see that your resume is more than just a list of all the employment experience, degrees of higher education, articles published, or awards received. Rather, your curriculum vitae (literally a life plan), describes the quality of character we are proud to put on our list of accomplishments. Imagine all the times you are asked in conversation the question, “What do you do?” and the answer is your place of employment, or your chosen profession. (What is the message we keep conveying by doing this? Should we expect anything different?) With an open-door mind, you respond, “I am a volunteer at my synagogue. I’m a parent who loves spending time with my children. I’m passionate about eradicating hunger and homelessness in my city.” This is reflected in the truth as seen through Ralph Waldo Emerson: “To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived - this is to have succeeded.” The open doors of social responsibility are reaching out to us from every walk of life and getting involved is easier and more possible than ever before. 

With an open-door mind, you read a book like Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody. You’ll discover that the communication revolution we’re experiencing is opening up the potential for better and more meaningful organizations, from businesses to shuls. Look at something like Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia that is designed, monitored, maintained, and viewed by people all over the world – for little or no cost. They call technology like Wikipedia ‘open-sourcing,’ where anyone, anywhere who cares enough about the effort can contribute. Ourclosed door fears of having someone put false information under an entry are checked by anyone who is interested and cares to make it right. Global efforts like this to share vital information are happening every day. Open-door minds see that where competition used to drive people into secrecy, success today is measured by how much you share. 

You hear a lot today about media like Facebook and Twitter – communication tools that reach extremely large groups of people instantaneously. If you remember the elections in Iran early this year, it was only through these programs that news agencies around the world were able to inform their viewers for what was taking place there. With all this information and opportunities to connect available, we can be in relationship with more like minded people than ever before. The coming years will prove that we’ll uncover a lot of what we don’t like about ourselves (or in the case of Twitter about others) before we find that in general, people are good natured and essentially care for one another. Facebook and Twitter open doors into our lives – whether it’s sharing photos of our family or uncovering the oppressive nature of an authoritarian regime. 

Valley Beth Shalom is very much like our open source system, where we bring our talents and energies here to help each build impressive resumes of character. With an open door mind, we see that we can no longer rely on a small, but very talented staff of professionals to build a community. It will take hundreds of people to develop the valuable networks of relationships that will give this community meaning. That is why we should celebrate the openness of our communal conversations in virtual and real space. Whether it is on Shabbat in dialogue over the weekly Torah portion, or when we engage in the ancient open-source system of the Jewish people, the Talmud, we are adapting to this revolutionary way to build community. Our doors are open to your talents and valued contributions. Open-door minds see this and want to share their best with others. 

With an open-door mind, you will take the risk of looking inside today‘s middle and high school classrooms. Around the country, public school districts are taking on the remarkable task of transforming their curriculum into a course in social responsibility. When I was in middle school and high school, all I cared about was getting good grades. There’s nothing more hopeful than taking the most self-centered group of our society and teaching them what it means to bring clothes to a homeless shelter or to make meals for people living on the streets. Today, you cannot graduate from high school – you are not considered a contributing member of society without this awareness. If young people have the chance to see their world differently, then we can too. The school systems are getting the message. It will be an investment that pays off over lifetimes. 

With an open-door mind, you find an organization in Los Angeles that seeks to eliminate homelessness, called Imagine LA. Without the powerful communication tools of the internet, all an organization like this could hope to change would be perhaps the lives of a 100 families over several years, if not decades. Not a small feat, but Imagine LA plans to match 8000 homeless families with the roughly 8000 religious communities in the area. Not only do they break the cycle of poverty and homelessness with a rigorous program of counseling toward financial independence, but they change lives, children and grandchildren will live better and more hopeful as a result of Imagine LA’s vision. With the kind of reach only something the internet can achieve, we can create networks like this across the world linked instantly and continuously. This can become a unified effort to break the patterns of neglect and despair for so many people. These are the open doors of broad based initiatives to fulfill basic needs, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, lifting up the fallen. 

Open-door minds are how we’ve accommodated and adapted as a people throughout history. We sing the words, “Pitchu Li Sha’are Tzedek Avo Vam Odeh Yah.” “Open for me the gates of justice, so that I may enter and give thanks to God.” The opening and closing the ark are the physical reminders of our capacity to look beyond the closed doors. And for us, what is found beyond? The words of Torah, our sacred text and our key for open-door living. No one speaks more powerfully to this than Rabbi Joshua ben Levi. Staring at the closed and decimated doors to the Temple in Jerusalem, he looked for the presence of God – he looked for the messiah. He was told he would find him at the gates of Rome. “How will I recognize him?” he asked. Sitting among the poor, untying, healing and retying each sore, each ailment, each fear and each failure. When Rabbi Joshua approached the Messiah and asked, “When will redemption come? When will God’s presence return to the world?” “Today – today if you will only hear his voice.” 

Today is the time for open-door minds, to stop staring at the problems our system will not self-correct. Today is the day to develop your open-door mind by investing in God’s economic plan for a just society, for ecological and social responsibility, and for nurturing holy individuality. Open the Machzor - open the book that chronicles these days of awe and see what Jewish tradition teaches. Read the words of U’Netaneh Tokef – The doors are not closed, teshuvah (repentance), tefillah (prayer), and tzedakah (acts to correct the injustices of the world) are the open doors we are invited to walk through today, right now. 

Hear the voice – See the open doors. What doors have been closing for you this past year? What doors are opening and waiting for you to enter? How will you walk through those doors? If only we may hear God’s voice – today we may all begin healing, and letting our open-door minds grow. 

The synagogue, the texts and traditions of our people are open door invitations. God’s world is open and we are lured in and drawn towards a place where our actions match our intentions. We will stand here again very soon on Yom Kippur and chant the words of Neilah – which literally refers to the closing gates of heaven and the sealing of the book of life. Until then, the doors are open – doors that assure us we can do more with less – doors that guide us to making decisions not so our profit margin is greater, but so our character margin is wider - doors that reflect our loftiest efforts to bring Shalom between us and in the world. Let us see this time as an invitation to enter God’s world again - a world where our actions really do matter – a world where we must learn to bring the languages of the heart and bank account together and weave them into a harmony of justice and compassion, honesty and integrity. 

L’Shana Tovah

* This document, or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced without the written permission of the author.