A Homeless Heart 5774

Every Shabbat I walk to synagogue.  Sometimes I walk alone; sometimes I walk with my family.   Now, it’s about a mile from my place to here. I walk down Ventura passing by the stores and under the 405 underpass. Many of you see me walking, some of you, honk at me to say hello! Some others of you even pull over, offering me a ride, and I thank you for that.  But what many of you don’t see, what many of us have forgotten to see - is that in that one mile stretch there used to be two homeless men sleeping under that overpass. They’re tucked away in the bushes or huddled in a concrete corner, between my home and here.   

These folks who sleep amongst the concrete and refuse are, to many in our city, nothing more than landscape. We don’t see them.

These men and women lay in the background of our city, like a lamppost or a bus stop, going unnoticed by most of us. We don’t see them.

Men like these only gain our notice when they sit at the intersection, or at an off ramp from the freeway begging for food, money, or work.  Otherwise they are invisible to us; they fade back into the curvature of the sidewalk never to be thought of again. We don’t see them.

Our own hustle and bustle, our need to take care of our own private lives has caused a kind of moral blindness that prevents us from taking notice of them. Worse yet, the voice of our ethical exhaustion seems to say to us that these folks are simply the price we pay for living in a city. And so we don’t see them.

For a long time, I didn’t see them either. My own blindness and my own fatigue kept me from seeing them. Until one particular gentleman, let’s call him Jack, began to waive at me as I walked by.  Sometimes he’d smile at my daughter as she rode in the stroller. Other times, it was just a nod.

Now, after a time, we began to expect one another. Our wordless “hello” became part of my Saturday morning ritual. Then, one day, while walking on my own to synagogue on that one mile stretch, I stopped and talked with Jack.  Sitting there next to the 405 on ramp up on the embankment amongst the bushes, we chatted for a while early on a Saturday morning.  It turns out that this Jack is a veteran. He served our country overseas, and experienced the carnage, the violence and the sheer abject nature of war. When Jack came home, he couldn't put the shards of his life together.  Every night, he has nightmares of that time.  The only way he was able to deal with the horrors was to completely obliterate his mind through drugs and alcohol.  It was only in the haze that he could he finally be at rest, and sleep for a while. And so the vicious cycle we all know began. Pain, addiction, self-abuse, and despair landed Jack right there next to the freeway. There we were together, side by side and face to face, me in my suit and him in raggedy old clothes. And for the first time, I saw this man. I really saw him. I saw inside him, his pain, his shame, and most of all his humanity.

We said our goodbyes and I told him I’d see him after services. After shul on my way home, I gathered together some food, a bottle of water and materials we keep here with a phone number for a social service agency.  But when I arrived at the underpass, he was gone.  All that remained were some rags and the McDonald’s coffee cup he’d been drinking that morning.  At first I thought he moved on, taking up residence in another location.  But later, I found out from a police officer that he had been arrested for sleeping there in the first place.

This bothered me a great deal and it still bothers me. As a family man it bothers me. As an American it bothers me. As a veteran it bothers me. But most importantly, as a Jew it bothers me. When Moses dreamed of a future for our people, he envisioned us settled in a prosperous land flowing with milk and honey.  In his dreams, the farmer brings the first fruits of his labor to Jerusalem and places them in a basket on the Mountain of the Lord.  In that moment, when all seems right, the old-man farmer can smile and say, “I’ve made it. I’ve done it. I’ll be ok.” In that very moment, on top of the mountain, standing there with callused hands and a leather neck, there in front of all the people, he is asked a question long forgotten in our Torah.  Standing before the altar, before the Lord, at the front of the congregation, at the turning of the New Year, he is asked a question. With his friends and his family he is asked a question. With his hopes and dreams on the line, he is asked a question. He is asked the very same question which preoccupies us today, on this New Year when we gather together the fruits of our labor, our friends and our family.

Standing there on the mountain, this farmer is asked, three simple words that penetrate deeply into the soul.   He is asked, “Who are you?”  

Who are you with all your fruit and gold?  Who are you, with all your family and friends?  

Who are you with all the choices you’ve made in your life?  

Who are you?

The Torah teaches us that farmer must answer this most pertinent of questions, before God and Israel, with clarity and with confidence. The Torah teaches that the answer must ring out with surety. This farmer, this Jew, this father answers saying, “My father was a homeless Aramean that went down to Egypt with meager numbers and resided there, and became a mighty nation, where the Egyptians treated us harshly. And when we cried out to the LORD, the God of our ancestors, the LORD heard our cry and freed us from Egypt. By a mighty hand and an outstretched arm God brought us to this place, this home, flowing with milk and honey. Where I have brought these first fruits and bowed them low before God and the people, and now I enjoy the spoils of my prosperity with the Levite, the orphan, and the stranger.”

Moses’ vision of for our personal prosperity is to truly enjoy the fruits of our labor, but not to make material gains our identity.  We are not only our wealth.  We are not simply a member of a family and community.  We are not only an amalgamation of our personal choices.  We are all of these things, and more.  

No, our great teacher Moses teaches that when we are asked in our lives, “who are you,” that we know that our lives do not begin with our births and end with our deaths.  Our lives began in a much earlier time, an ancient time, thousands of years ago, back to Jacob, back to Abraham, who left home, a wandering homeless man.

The Torah teaches us that in all our settledness, in all our wealth, in all our power, in all our privilege there is still, deep inside our chests, beating with the steady thumping of time, a homeless heart.

This, my friends, is the proper answer, the Jewish answer, to the immortal question of “who are you?”

Who are you? We are Adam and Eve, who were exiled from their home.

Who are you? We are Noah and his family, who had to make a home aboard a ship amongst turbulent seas.

Who are you? We are Father Abraham, who left his home and wandered the world in search of the Promised Land.

Who are you? We are Father Jacob, who left his home to find himself and to build a nation.

Who are you? We are Joseph, thrown into the pit, arrested, put in jail, far away from home.

Who are you? We are Moses who left his home and found God in the desert.

Who are you? We are the people of Israel who crossed the sea, wandered the wasteland, and have been exiled, homeless for thousands of years. They threw us out of our homeland. They threw us out of England, out of France, out of Germany, out of Russia, out of Iran, out of Argentina out of every country in the world.

Who are you? We are the people with homeless hearts. We are the people who know better than anyone else what it means to be homeless.

The prophets remind us that in our prosperity, we must not forget those who have not found their homes.   God upholds the cause of the orphan and the widow, and befriends the stranger, providing him/her with food and clothing. -- You too must befriend the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

And in this season, does not Isaiah say that God does not want our pleading, our fasting, and penitence? No, this is the fast that is desired: To unlock fetters of wickedness, and untie the cords of the yoke to let the oppressed go free; to break off every yoke. It is to share the bread with the hungry, and to take the wretched poor into your home; when you see the naked, to clothe them, when you see the sick to heal them, and when you see the down- trodden the lift them up?   For once you see these fellow human beings, these reflections of the Divine, you cannot be ambivalent. You cannot stand idly by; your homeless heart must beat in time to the rhythm of theirs. Once I saw Jack, how could I “unsee” him?

In the soul of every Jew - no matter how high we climb. No matter what position we hold, no matter how much we believe we’ve made it, we have not yet fulfilled the dreams of the prophets unless we remember that a homeless heart beats in our chests.  

There can be no argument that in the long years since our people left the dark ghettos of Europe or the sun-baked streets of Tehran that we’ve made it.  We’ve been guided by Lady Liberty’s torch over great spans of ocean - striving and hoping for a secure place to live, a fortunate future and a flourishing life here in America.  And we’ve made it.

We’ve carved out our own place in the American Dream; Jews have helped to build this country. We’ve constructed buildings that kiss the sky, designed and paved highways that connect our continent together.  We’ve inspired millions through our writing and performances on both the large and small screen alike.  

We’ve made it.

We can attend any university, belong to any club, and do business with any person we like,  We’ve made it.

70% of executives in the highest levels on Wall Street are Jewish.  We’ve made it.

The Mayors or the three largest cities in America are Jewish. We’ve made it.

Three of the most powerful elected officials in Los Angeles are Jewish. We’ve made it.

In the eyes of Jefferson and Washington, We’ve made it.

In the eyes of Nietzsche and Dewey, we’ve made it.

In the eyes of Fortune, Forbes and Cosmopolitan magazine, we’ve made it.

But, in the eyes of our tradition, in the eyes of our father Abraham, in the eyes of Moses and Isaiah, in the eyes of the rabbis we haven’t made it.

Not yet. Not until we remember our homeless hearts, and find a home for all.

This great country has brought prosperity to so many. We’ve sailed the Milky Way and sent satellites to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. We’ve delved deep into the human body to put genes inside chromosomes, placed medicine inside cells, with only micrometers to spare. In a country that can do all that, why can’t we find a place for Jack?

If we can build a society that lets a man take a small step on the moon, and place the Old Glory on the Sea of Tranquility, and call that a victory for humanity, why can’t we build a country that lets every family take a small step across the threshold of a home? Why does victory elude us here?

That’s because we live in a society that makes it a crime to be impoverished, a crime to be traumatized, and a crime to have no home.  As an American I say that this is shameful.

The author Alice Hoffman said, “Once you know some things, you can't unknow them. It's a burden that can never be given away.”  That’s especially true of people and who having fallen on hard times, can’t seem to pick up those shattered pieces of their lives.    And now that you know a bit about Jack, you can’t “unknow” him. You can’t “unsee” him.

Here are some other things you need to know. There are nearly 60,000 people in Los Angles who sleep on the streets every night. 60,000 heads with no place to rest, sixty thousand mouths begging for food, sixty thousand people who live in fear and shame. 25% of all homeless in LA are what’s called chronically homeless. That means that they’ve been on the street for a year or more, and can’t seem to find their way off.   This group is of special concern because they use 75% of the resources devoted to the entire social safety net. 25% use 75%. If we can find homes for them, we can build resilience into the social fabric of our city.

I told you as a veteran, Jack’s homelessness bothered me. That’s because I served as a naval chaplain in rabbinical school counseling soldiers and sailors during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. So this part is very troubling - 20% of all homeless are veterans like Jack. Men and women who served for our way of life are now treated like garbage. And the outlook for their future is not bright. Now that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are ending, experts are predicting a “reverse surge” of veterans returning to our shores. They predict that 31,000 veterans will become homeless in Los Angeles in the next two years.   That’s three times the amount that are homeless today. The numbers are staggering, and shameful.

The time to act is now.

Now I know what you are thinking.  You’re a bleeding-heart rabbi. You come from a tradition of bleeding heart rabbis. But these are systemic problems that put a mark of shame on our entire community.

You also might be thinking, they're not us.  They’re not Jews.  With our limited resources, how can we help others?  You might also be thinking, "no one helped us when we were homeless?" When we were a wandering people, let them help themselves.  

To that, I say we are not a provincial people.  We have never been concerned with our destiny alone.  Our teacher Rabbi Schulweis teaches that Judaism is a global faith.   The first eleven chapters of the Torah knows nothing of Jews or Judaism. God's initial covenant is with all that live. Life itself is Godly.

Our greatness as a religion is in our gifts of compassion and responsibility to all of humanity. We need to resist either/or categories of thinking that separates us from one another. We support the poor of the Gentile. We visit their sick. We mourn their dead, “mipnei darkei’ shalom, for the pathways of peace.” Every Jew has universal responsibilities, because one cannot be a Jew until one affirms being human first. The pathways of peace can only be trodden through the gates that our open to all of humanity.  

"Few are guilty" Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, "All are responsible."

Hayom   Ta’amtzeinu Today is the day we need the strength to act. Hayom - Today.  

It is time for our people now settled, warmed by the fires of prosperity to remember our homeless hearts and open our doors, to ensure that those left in the cold have a place to rest their weary heads.

It is time, to break the cycle, and bring in those who have not yet found safe harbor.

Hayom - Today.   It is time to act before more are arrested, or given bus tickets to other places to say that’s not my problem.

Hayom - Today.   It’s that we not just talk about justice, but use our power to move the scales of justice.

Hayom - Today.   It is time. Now.

That’s why I brought the portraits of the homeless, painted by Dr. Stuart Perlman to hang in our hallway. So that you meet them, confront them, learn their stories, and be provoked by them. And so that you see them. Just as I saw Jack.

We’re organizing a homeless task force. We have amazing leaders in place, we’ve already met with county officials, we’ve met with coalitions of organizations already, and now it’s time for Valley Beth Shalom to take a stand. To work within our walls to teach, and outside our walls to find housing, to support mental health, and to lift those in need out of poverty.

Here are a few things you can do starting today.

Take a few minutes over the holidays and see the art exhibit, learn the stories of the homeless. Come back with friends, school groups, youth groups, and your havurah. We have trained docents who will teach and discuss what you read.

We are working with Milken Community High School and New Jewish Community High School and the Jewish Journal to build the Homeless Sukkah. Talk to me after about how to do that.

But Most of all join our campaign.

Take the card from your seat, fill it out and send it back in to join us.  

If you remember your homeless heart. Join us.

If you care about the future of our city. Join us.

If you want others to live with dignity. Join us.

If you want to build a better Los Angeles, and better America,

Then Join us.

I wish you from the bottom of my heart a happy, healthy New Year for your houses. A Year of sweetness, of conscience, and a home for all.