RABBI NOAH FARKAS: 2018/5779

RABBI NOAH FARKAS: 2018/5779

[collapsed title="2018 Rosh Hashanah Sermon: Love Your Neighbor as Yourself"]

"Let There Be Love"

It was once said that Judaism is a tradition of minimum text and maximal interpretation. Take these three words from the book of Leviticus “V'ahavtah l'rechah kamocha” Love your neighbor as yourself. (Lev. 19:18).  How clear can that be? How straight forward? How simple, how universal?  “V'ahavtah l'rechah kamocha” Love your neighbor as yourself.

This year I am going to give two sermons on a single same verse. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” On Rosh Hashanah I’d like to explore the first two thirds of the verse, V’ahavta L’rechah, or “Love your neighbor.” On Yom Kippur, I’m going to explore the last word “Kamocha” “as yourself.”

It has been said by many in history the Judaism is not a religion that inobles love. That “Love your neighbor as yourself” is a small thing; an exception to the regular rule of the God of the Bible. After all, the Torah itself never depicts God coming to the people and saying, “I love you.” It’s not written there even once. To sum this up, in modern times, the great thinker and mystic Joseph Campbell described that -of all things- his computer: “Computers are like the God of the Old Testament, lots of rules and no mercy.”

Who by Mac and Who by Windows, Who by the spinning wheel and Who by blue screen of death, Who by the failure to back-up, and Who by forgetting their password...

In all seriousness, though, Campbell's line of thinking is typical of two millennia of polemics against Judaism. That thinking goes that the old God of Judaism is irascible, holding grudges and requiring a heavy penance for sin.

As early as the the 23rd Chapter of Matthew,  one of the synoptic gospels, Jews are decried as a people who are too focused on ritual, on the length of our tzitzit,or what we put into our mouths or where we sit in shul on the holidays. (Although I am afraid they got that last one right.)

Further on in the Gospel of John, in the 13th chapter it is written, “I give you a new commandment: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (John 13:34) For John, Christianity was a new religion founded not on the preconditions of covenant and law, but on a new world order, that of love.

I’m not here today to refute the bonafides of Christianity, or to dispensate against the Gospel of Matthew or John. I leave that to them to preach their own truth, as I do have great feelings of warmth and companionship towards our Christian brothers and sisters. As someone famously said, some of my best friends are Christians.

But I am here today to set forth from our own tradition what these gospels missed, and what we often miss. That the commandment to love each other is not new, and just because God never says, “I love you” does not mean we were never worthy of God’s love, or ever felt the warmth of God’s love or know how to love because of God’s love.

And that’s why we have to get this right, in our time, today in a world that seems so distant from love. Judaism and Jews must take a stand. To make our claim about who we are and the covenant we stand for. For right now our world is full of hatred and xenophobia, greed, corruption racism and fear.  And worst of all, is the expectation that love is a naive and simple emotion left to the privacy of your house and bedroom and not to be brought into the House or the boardroom.

In a world that is dark and bleak and thinks too little of itself, we have to get this right. We have to show what we mean by Jewish love which has existed and sustained us long before the gospel, and certainly long before law was stripped of love by the modern philosophers and political thinkers. We have to speak to the idea of commanded love, or I would say covenantal love and why that is Jewish love.

And why the commandment “Love your Neighbor” is perhaps the most important one for us to hear today.

To do that, to share our covenantal understanding of love, I think it best to tell you the story about the rabbi who loved God and loved the world more than any other in history of our people. Who lived in a world not unlike our own.

Born to humble origins, Akiva ben Yosef became a shepard and married a woman named Rachel. His life was simple tending the flocks tending his own family. Until he turned 40 years old and had a midlife crisis that changed the world forever.

Many men buy a sports car, or get season tickets, or flirt with the wrong sort of person. Akiva did something far more radical for a shepherd, he studied Torah.

He devoured text after text, and soon became one of the greatest rabbis of not just of his time, but of anytime. He reared thousands upon thousands of students. He lead the effort to canonize the Tanakh, our Bible. His writing were so cherished that his pupil Rabbi Meir kept them safe and expounded upon them. Rabbi Meir passed these precious writings to his student, a man named Judah, who was said to have been born on the day of Akiva’s death, who became Judah the Prince, the editor of the Mishnah, essentially Rabbi Akiva’s grand-student.

It was Akiva’s notions of Jewish law, it was Rabbi Akiva’s notion of our halakhah, it was Rabbi Akiva’s methodology for studying and expounding on the Torah that became the outline for all of Jewish law, constructing the very worldview that makes us Jews one generation to the next for thousands of years all the way up to today.

Such was Rabbi Akiva’s power that it is said that he entered the mystical and holy orchard of Torah study he came back sane and strong where his companions went mad, sick and even died. Such was Akiva’s wisdom that even Moses, looking down from heaven, was speechless at Akiva’s ability to expound upon the Torah. Such was his his exuberance for love that he ended up giving his life for love.

The world in which Rabbi Akiva lived was brutal. A people conquered, a land vanquished, Akiva saw it all. Twenty-five years after the fall of the Temple, the Jews stood watching over the smoldering ruins of Jerusalem.  Rabbi Akiva was chosen to be a regional emissary to Rome and spent two years in Italy. Akiva saw first-hand how Rome was powerful and oppressive.

The Roman Caesars knew of love too. Roman love is narcissistic. They loved power, of money, of prestige and of violence. Everything is about power to the Roman mind. Their greatest teacher, Cicero, a hundred years before Rabbi Akiva, in his first speech before the Roman Senate believed that loyalty to the state was more important than any one’s convictions.  

Those that were dissidents, who thought for themselves, who didn’t agree with the Senate’s agenda, felt the power and brutality of the Roman legion. Any expression other than Roman was treasonous, it is incumbent upon the state to “cull the dregs of the republic”, by that he means those who resist the oppression of Roman rule. (Cicero, The First Oration Against Catiline).

The two years that Rabbi Akiva was in Rome, the Caesar was a particularly bad man by the name of Titus Flavius Caesar Domitianus Augustus; who felt that only he had the right idea about Roman power. Domitian curtailed the power of the Senate by creating a cult of personality around his rule, stripped Roman citizens of their citizenship, and sought to undo the republic and refashion it into an empire. Domitian took the surname Augustus in order to link his rule to the emperors of old, in an effort to restore Rome’s greatness to that of the Empire under Augustus Caesar. (Jones, Brian W. (1992). The Emperor Domitian. London: Routledge)

It is into this world that Rabbi Akiva was born. It is into this world that he grew and learned Torah. It is into this world that Rabbi Akiva preached. A world of oppression and suppression. A world of violence and xenophobia - a world of hate. A world where the most powerful nation on earth teetered on the edge of despotism, fascism, risking its own democratic origin all in the name of regaining greatness.  

It is into this world where ideas of like friendship and love were snuffed out like embers.  A world that that found favor in the eyes Machiavelli, and Nietzsche and Mussolini and Hitler, and all those who believe that the rule of law comes through fear and scheming and physical power.  

Rome ruled a world that says if you are not in the “in” group, you are nothing but dregs, to be thrown out like garbage, treated like animals, sent to the circus or the colosseum to fight of for life to be crucified, tortured and humiliated.  

A world where your citizenship can be stripped, your rights taken away and your life decimated because you speak out against the republic. This is the world into which Rabbi Akiva was born, a world into which he preached, and the world that eventually took his life.

And yet, in this void and vastness and darkness, Akiva chose to protest, he chose to not be silent. Akiva chose to study and teach Torah in the school house, in the synagogue, in the street, and in the colosseum.

What was Rabbi Akiva’s revolutionary thinking that changed the world?

It is love.

It is love.

He looked into the darkness of the world that the Torah’s greatest teaching is about love. The tradition teaches that when debating what the most important verse of the Torah was, of all the 5,888 versus Akiva chose our little verse, our three little words: “V'ahavtah l'rechah kamocha, “Love your neighbor as yourself” Klal Gadol is the greatest principle of the Torah.  (Sifra Kedoshim 2:5)

Love your neighbor as yourself. Our three words. “V'ahavtah l'rechah kamocha.” This is the greatest principle of the Torah.  

In writings attributed to his school of thinking the tradition says:

That love even in the toughest and roughest of times, gives you hope for a better future.  (BT Horayot 10b).

Love is stronger than oppression. (BT Gittin 36b)

When we argue with each other, we can be fierce, and we are fierce, we are Jews after all, we need to engage and not disengage from each other and from the world because our banner is a banner of love. (BT Shabbat 63a)

Love is stronger than political forces, because it endures forever. (Maggid Mishneh, “Laws Concerning Neighbors” 14:8)

Against the blackness, the oppression, the injustice, the fear, the uncertainty, the danger Rabbi Akiva took the risk and said the central theme of the Torah and therefore the central theme of all being - is love.

Love is challenge.

Love is resistance.

Love is protest.

Rabbi Akiva knew the power of love and how it can give you the strength to endure even the bleakest of hours. It is why he sought to find love in every moment and in every place. Love - not fear, not ritual, not obligation, is at the center of our covenant with God.

At first glance it might be hard to see that directly in our Torah, but I’ll give you an example of How Rabbi Akiva saw it.

When it came to adding the Song of Songs to the Tanakh, a small book filled with love poetry, it was Rabbi Akiva who was the biggest advocate.

Do not, Rabbi Akvia said, underestimate the value of the poetry, for it is the song of love between God and the Jewish people. It is with this small candle, this little love song, say the rabbis that the treasure of Torah can truly be understood. (Songs Zuta 1:1). And how right they were.

Using Rabbi Akiva’s interpretation, the entire story of the Torah comes alive through the lenses of the Song of Songs. Every moment renewed, revealed again as a love song between Israel and God.

The moment at Sinai being the greatest. Those who lambast Judaism as religion based on God’s heartless power and commandedness look to the smoking mountain with its thunder and lightning and and the trembling mass of humanity standing under the mount - as the moment God took love away from the people and replaced it with fear.  According to some scholars God freed us from one tyrant and put us to bondage under the yoke of another.

But the Song of Songs says:

“Set me as a seal upon your heart; like the seal upon your hand. For love is fierce as death, passion mighty as Sheol; Its’ darts are darts of fire, a blazing flame...” (Song of Songs 8:6)

Rabbi Akvia’s student Rabbi Meir saw not a moment of fear or power, but a moment of love. The smoke of the mountain evaporates into a chuppah, the fire is not heat of wrathful anger but the darts of love. The covenant carved into the tablets was a seal not in stone but that upon the heart and hand.

According to the Akivan view The Torah itself came down the mountain and went before each individual and said, “Here is what I am, here are my commandments, will you have me?” And each Israelite says, “Yes! Yes!” Then as the Song of Songs says, “Kiss me with the kisses of your mouth.” (Songs 1:2)  And the Israelites on that day agree to be covenanted to God and the Torah, sealed upon the heart and upon the hand. (Songs Rabba 8:2-7)

We must find love, everywhere, at every moment. For our covenant, our moment with God, the moment of revelation, the moment of bonding of truth to the world is a moment of love.

Unlike the Caesar, who used Roman law to place his heel upon the necks vulnerable, Rabbi Akiva, and for us his descendants, the covenant with God, the law itself is a covenant of Love. Our God does not place the heel, our God outstretches the arm, to deliver the enslaved, to raise up the downtrodden, to heal, to partner, to upend the earth in love.

The God of Judaism is a God of Love, and the Torah is our ketubah.

Which means the greatest love letter ever written opens with these words, “Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamyim v’et ha’aretz. V’haarete’z hayta tohu vavo’hu.  V’ruach Elohim merekhefet al pneli ha tahom..” In the Beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth and it was chaos, a void and dark, and God looked into the darkness and the chaos and void and said. “Va’hei or” let there be light.” (Gen. 1:1).

It’s the most remarkable thing ever written, it’s the most remarkable choice ever made, for out of the vastness of the void God drew the light and chose to create a space for us. To love us and to be loved by us. To invite us under the chuppah.

Out of meaninglessness God chose meaning.  

Out of darkness God chose light.  

Out of nothingness God chose to make something.   

That is Jewish love, covenantal love.

The Torah is a love letter to the world against the darkness and uncertainty of the meaningless of life. Against the stars of the universe, the wheel houses of heaven, out of pull of maw of injustice God blew life into the nostrils of humanity and said, “You matter.”  

No matter how small you feel, you matter.  

No how insignificant your life seems, you matter.

No how big your troubles, or worthless you might feel, you matter.

In other words, “I love you.”

I love you. What more do we need?

God never says, “I love you.” in the Torah, but every breath is a wonder; every moment is graceful. Existence itself -life itself- is an act of love.

This was Rabbi Akiva’s greatest achievement, shaping the Jewish worldview forever.  

Our liturgy reflects Rabbi Akiva’s revolution.

It is replete with God’s love. Here is just one love song we sing everyday. Ahavat Olam Beit Israel Amcha ahata Torah u’mitzvot Chukim Umishpatim Otanu Limadita. - An unending cosmic love letter is given to each of us, inscribed in the Torah, the commandments, its laws and precepts. The covenant is a covenant love, the mitzvot are verses of love song. Ki Hem Chayeinue V’orech Yameniu, they are our life and give us life, and set out the path of our days.

Covenantal love is not romantic love, Eros.

Covenantal love is not friendship, or Philia.

Covenantal love is grace, it is not agape.

There is no Greek word for Covenantal love because it does not come from Athens or Golgotha. The Torah comes from Zion and Jerusalem.

Covenantal love is called in Hebrew, Chesed. Chesed is love layden with responsibility, and clad in deed. Chesed is the type of of love binds kindness and caring to our sense of mutuality, and our common fate. Chesed takes into account our obligations to each other’s flourishing and not just our emotional dispositions. Chesed is the kind of love that comes as a seal, a covenant.

As it says in Songs, “Set me as a seal upon your heart; like the seal upon your hand.”

There must be a covenant in order to have love. There must be the rule of law, but those laws, because they are given in love, must be flexible enough to caress the nape of human suffering.

That is why sin matters.

That is why Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur matter.

You must be held morally accountable for your sins.

Sins against others, sins against yourself and sins against God.

We sing on these Holidays Adonai Adoni El Rachum Erec Apa’im Rav Chesed V’Emet, Noseh Chesed Lelpahim, Noseh Avon Va’fesha, V’nakeh... (Ex. 34:6-7)

Adonai, Adonai, El Rachum Ve’chanun… Our God, the LORD is a God of compassion and love.

God holds you accountable, and remembers sin, according to the Torah. That is part of the covenant, but in doing so, God always begins in love.

There is no prophet to intercede for you, there is no priest to make expiation. We must all be held accountable and save ourselves on these holy days, and that redemption itself is possible, because because we know that God is a God of love.

How do we return God’s love? Our Torah has the answer.

V’havta et Adonai Elohecha B’chol Levavcah, Bechol Nafshecha U’bchol Meodecha.  “Love God with all your might, all your heart, and all your soul...  Bind these words as a frontlet between your eyes and a sign upon your hand.” (Deut. 6:6-8) Or in other words as it says in Songs of Songs, “Set me as a seal upon your heart; like the seal upon your hand.”

Loving God back is a full body experience.

God gave us love through the word and we return it through the deed through mitzvot. To love God is to act on God’s behalf.

The Hasidic tradition teaches that "Love your neighbor as yourself" the word kamocha, carries the numerical value of eighty-six, the same numerical value as the word Elohim. To love your neighbor is to Love God.

This is not an academic discussion. The repercussions are real, it is a matter of life and death. It is a matter of community and nationhood, of ethics and our mutual responsibility for each other.

To love God is to love the covenant.  

To love God is to love your neighbor.

To love God is to love the world.

It only says twice to Love God in the Torah, but it says 36 times to Love the stranger, the widow and the orphan.

You cannot Love God without loving the world.

You cannot Love God who loves the orphan, the widow and the stranger without loving the widow, the orphan, the stranger, for each of them is your neighbor.

You cannot love God and support policies that make orphans.

You cannot love God and support policies that kill innocents and make widows and widowers.

You cannot love God and cast out the stranger, the poor, the downtrodden.

The covenant with God is that of love with law is at its center.

Jewish Justice is Jewish Love. And Jewish Love is Jewish Justice.

Justice is Love. Love is Justice.

Just as God chose to to pull the light out of the darkness, Rabbi Akiva chose love to resist the very oppressive dark world that surrounded him.

Love is how Rabbi Akiva resisted oppression.

Love is how we resist oppression.

Love is how we resist hate.

Love is how we say against the void, “v’yahei or. Let there be light.”

Let there be love.
When you see an act of hate, act with love.
Let there be love.
When you see an act of injustice, act with love.
Let there be love. 
When you see an act of oppression, act with love.
Let there be love.

We cannot fight for justice by returning anger for anger and hate for hate. For that just means that hate wins. Both their anger and their hate and our anger and our hate. As Martin Luther King once said, “Darkness cannot be driven away by darkness, only light can do that.” (MLK, Strength To Love, 1977, p.47)

You do not hate the oppressor, but love the oppressed.
You do not hate the tyrant, but love the persecuted.
You do not hate the abuser but love the abused.

Which is why we return to our story. Domitian Caesar was assassinated by his court. He was replaced by a man named Trajan who abdicated the throne and then replaced by Hadrian, who was the worst of them all. Hadrian outlawed everything that was not indigenously Roman, including the teaching of Torah. Rabbi Akiva was arrested and brought the before Romans. He was tried and convicted for teaching Torah, his flesh was combed away from his bones. He was asked by his students of his torments if he felt his sufferings were good for him, if the were justified.

He said they were sufferings of love, issure shel ahava. Not because torture is good, or that the righteous can handle punishment, or that he needs to be a symbol to others, but because the Romans could not break his spirit. Even in pain at the end of his life, he still looked upon the world and saw love. Because as it says in songs, “Love is as fierce as death.”

In his very last moments he sang out the Shema and the V’ahavta. His students, weeping, asked why he was so joyus. He answered, “my students, I now know what it means to love the LORD God with all my might, all heart and all my soul. Even until the moment of death.” (Ber.61b)

Love is resistance.
Love transforms.
Love redeems.

We do not have to martyr ourselves like Rabbi Akiva. But our lives depend on our choices in this moment.

You cannot love God, if you do not love justice.
You cannot love God without loving the world.
You cannot love God without loving your neighbor.
This is Jewish love, commanded love, covenantal love.

This is what the gospels miss. This is what we often miss ourselves. The command is not new. It has always been there, from the very beginning. The greatest principle of the Torah, are our three words, “V'ahavtah l'rechah kamocha, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  

We have to our very real problems, our environmental problems, our political problems, our racial and economic problems, but we must build a world of love. Out of the darkness, out of the chaos, out of the void, like God, like Rabbi Akiva, we must all say, “Let there be love.”[/collapsed]

 

[collapsed title="2018 Yom Kippur Sermon: Hidden in Love: A Sermon on Mental Health"]

"Hidden in Love: A Sermon on Mental Health"

For the past ten years I have lead a physician's talmud study group called Dinner for Docs. We meet about once a quarter, have some wine and eat a nice dinner. Then we engage in Talmud study. It was there that I really got to know Dr. Joe Beezy. He’s sitting right over there. Joe and I became friends over a page of Talmud, so much so that he asked me to perform the marriage of his daughter, Talya, to wonderful man named Leonard. Talya, it was such a beautiful day, warm and verdant, your dad played the recorder, remember? It was on that day I met your brother this dashing young man with a huge smile, named Ben.

I’m going to talk about him now, with your permission.

Ben grew up here at Valley Beth Shalom. He went to Emek Hebrew Academy obtaining an orthodox education. He had his Bar Mitzvah right here on this Bima. Ben went to Milken Community School up the hill. Once graduated from Milken he then went to USC where he graduated Summa Cum Laude and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He studied abroad at the University of Edinburgh where he worked for a member of Scottish Parliament.

He went bicycling through Tuscany and France. He was selected for full scholarship to the inaugural class of the University of California Irvine School of Law. He was the first person to obtain a combined JD/MBA degree while at Irvine. He worked as an intern for the Ministry of Justice in Israel on a project combating human trafficking.

Later he was employed by a company called Broadcom. Even later, he worked as an associate in a downtown law firm handling some significant litigation. Ben was a powerhouse kid with amazing talent. He ran the LA Marathon twice, his best time was 3 hours 47 minutes. He was successful at everything he ever endeavored to do. Ben got straight A’s, traveled the world, wrote law review articles and was respected and loved by his friends and family. In fact he was respected by a global community.

Tragically, at the beginning of this summer, Ben took his own life.  

He fought every battle, climbed every hill and conquered them all except one. He lost the fight against himself.  

The Torah teaches, “V'ahavtah l'rechah kamocha” -“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Lev. 19:18) Last week on Rosh Hashanah I focused on the first half of the verse. “Love your neighbor.” There I spoke about love as act of defiance against oppression. Love as a covenant between God and ourselves that binds us in covenant with each other. Today on Yom Kippur, I will focus on the last word, kamocha. “As yourself.” For it is this last word, kamocha, which gives us the internal energy to help us love others. Kamocha tells us that each of us have a sense of self-worth, that we are worthy of love and in turn, gives us the space to love others.  And that it is this sense of kamocha, of knowing you are worthy of love, which funds the command to love our neighbors.

But what if we don’t have that sense of self-worth? What if we don’t love ourselves? What if, as someone once said to me, ‘Rabbi, I give all my love away and I just don’t have any left for myself.”?

Rabbi Akiva said, “V'ahavtah l'rechah kamocha” -“You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18) is klal gadol, it is the greatest principle of the Torah. The whole of Judaism rests on it. And so we have to explore this idea. We have to explore this idea further and look into ourselves and see our truest sense of self, for who we really are.

Baruch Ata Adonai, Yodeah Razim. Praised are you Adonai you knows the secrets of people. This is the prayer we say when we see a large crowd gathered. This prayer is an acknowledgement that in a crowd, one cannot know what is inside the heart of each other person. None of us know, even friends whom we’ve known for twenty years, exactly what each of us is really dealing with. God, on the other hand, the prayer says, is the Knower of Secrets. But on this day, today, we all need to know.

As a rabbi, you see me, you hear me, you can see my social media, etc. And I see all of you. I’ve been at Valley Beth Shalom for ten years. What I have seen in those years is thousands of stories I’ve had the privilege of knowing. I’ve performed hundreds of funerals and weddings. Even more Bar Mitzvahs. I have come to know you. I know that there is hardly a family here that does not struggle with something.

I know that there are families here today dealing with depression. I know that there are families here with loved ones suffering from schizophrenia. I know that there are mothers or fathers who changed after an illness and now something inside of them seems off. I know that there are men and women here who struggle to make a living and it's affecting your family life. I know that there are parents here today who can’t sleep at night because their child is depressed or seems lonely and you don’t know what to do to help them. I know of children that ran away from your life without any real explanation.

There are families that are here, in this room, that are seized by addiction and alcoholism.

There are families that are here, in this room, that that are dealing with issues of mental health.

There are individuals and families that are here, in this room, that feel invisible and broken. That feel lost and exile.

The Torah teaches, Hanistarot L’Adonai Eloheinu, v’haniglot lanu, u’lvavaneinu ad olam la’asot et kol d’vrei haTorah hazot. The hidden things belong to God, but the revealed things are ours and our children’s to act on the teachings of this Torah forever. (Deut.29:28)

Hanistarot, the hidden things belong to God, but our Torah tells us that the v’haniglot, the revealed things belong to us. Today we must make what is hidden revealed, for our sake and for our children’s sake.

Let us open the book of life, the book of redemption, the book of merit, the book of forgiveness, we open ourselves and open the book to see what is really inside - together.

I wish I could say that Ben’s story is unique, that he is the only good kid who was troubled. I wish I could say that we Jews have figured out how to protect ourselves and our kids from mental illness. I wish I could say that our own community at VBS was somehow inoculated against the epidemic of mental illness. Alas we are not. Mental illness is everywhere. It knows no boundaries of gender, ethnicity, age, or economic status.

According the National Alliance of Mental Illness, this disease affects one out of every five adults in the United States. 43.8 million people every year. About 16 million adults suffer from depression and 42 million live with various anxiety disorders. Many, many people experience both. Worse yet, suicide rates have risen, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by an average of 30% in the last fifteen years. In some areas of the country it has risen by 57%. 45,000 people died by suicide in 2016 alone. That is more than twice as homicides. We kill ourselves more than we kill other people.

Those between the ages of 15 and 34, suicide is the second highest cause of death. And among children, our children, little children, those of just 10 years old, suicide has risen by 30%.

Scientists tell us that mental illness is just like any other illness. When someone breaks their arm, they go to the doctor. When they have a heart attack, they take medicine, or have a procedure. And we pray for their recovery. We put their name on a list and read it outloud on the sabbath. That way everyone knows who in our community is sick. But, as my friend Rabbi Paul Kipnes once asked, we pray for the healing of the body and the spirit refuat hanefesh, refuat haguf, but why do we only put the names of those with broken bodies on our misheberach lists? Where are those with bipolar affective disorder, with chronic depression, with alzheimer’s and dementia, with OCD, with teen eating disorders. Or those who cut themselves, or who have succumbed to the disease of addiction?

Do they not have our prayers?

Do they not deserve our blessing?

We are just so afraid to talk about this. Partly because we live in a culture that seems allergic to vulnerability. It’s because we think being vulnerable means being weak. We think being vulnerable is somehow “less than.” We think being vulnerable means we sharing our“private business” with everyone.

But we have to. We have to shine a light on the shame of vulnerability.

The rabbis, as always help us lead the way. Only four pages into the Talmud, four out of thousands, the topic of vulnerability is raised. It’s in a story. Once Rabbi Jonathan, a great sage became really sick. He holds himself up in his chambers and refused to see anyone, until his friend and student Rabbi Hanina came and visited him. Rabbi Hanina asked Rabbi Jonathan. “Are your sufferings endearing to you?” Are they something you wear as a badge of honor? Are you such private a person, that you wouldn’t receive help when it is offered? To which Rabbi Jonathan said, “Neither my sufferings nor their reward are endearing to me.” Rabbi Jonathan reached out his hand from his sick bed to be lifted up. As he became stronger with his students help, he said, “One cannot break out of prison on his own.” (T.B. Berachot 5a)

The rabbis knew that from the get go that we put up these walls to keep others out of our deepest selves, including walls that keep ourselves out of our own hearts, but these walls can go from being a bulwark to being a prison. Instead of keeping others out, we keep ourselves locked in. It’s only through openness to uncertainty and risk, a willingness to be vulnerable and let others in, can we break out of our own prisons.

Ben’s parents, Miriam and Joe, tried so very hard to get him to therapy for depression but his disease and the stigma our society that has created around this disease made him highly resistant to getting the help he needed. Ben was not an isolated boy. He played with others. He traveled with friends. He was embedded in a community, but he hid his suicidal thoughts from everybody. He denied having suicidal thoughts or plans even when asked directly. So strong was the stigma of dealing with depression, that his darkest thoughts only came to light when Joe and Miriam found this written in his private journal on his computer:

“Sometimes, I feel like reaching out to others and telling them everything, but then I will just feel ashamed or risk people's confidence in me. Perhaps I would have some immediate relief, but I would jeopardize my ability to get jobs and people would know these vulnerabilities about me and I would feel weak forever. I see myself reaching toward so many faces and arms, but I sink farther and farther down. It is a total descent into the deep."

Ben never wanted to speak about what was truly inside of him. This disease we call depression. Even when asked directly, so strong was his shame and embarrassment, his vulnerability, that he would deflect every question.  

And yet because of it, because of this terrible disease and a society that has yet to fully destigmatize mental illness, Ben, like the prophet Jonah, fell farther and farther slipping below the surface and down into the deep.

Hanistarot, the hidden things, they belong to God. We cannot bring Ben back. He belongs to God now. V’haniglot, but the things we are able to know, to do, to act, belong to us and our children. We must make what is hidden revealed, for our sakes and for our children’s sake.

As so for you, or for someone you love are dealing with mental illness. You who feel invisible and unheard. You who feel isolated and strange. You who feel in exile.

Know that I am here. I see you. I love you. You are loved. You are needed. You have our blessings.

You might feel sick, but no more or less sick than anyone who has cancer or pneumonia. We don’t yet have the tools to fully deal with the disease you have or your loved one’s have. But you are not weird, or sinful, or guilty for being the way you are. You are not a bad person. Nor are you unworthy of blessings. God blew the breath of life into all that is and gave all of us, including you, a unique soul. Part of each of us is perfect and unique. You are a blessing to us. You are loved. Baruch Ata Adonai, Mishaneh Habriot. Blessed is God who creates differences in the world.

I see you. I love you. You are loved.

And you should know that there is no one quite like you in the whole universe. God prints the holy image on each of our souls, but unlike the usual coinage where everything's the same, God’s coins are all unique. You are priceless, and you matter. You matter to the world. You matter to me. You matter to this community. And being here, I mean right here, means that there are five thousand other unique souls that are also here for you.

No matter how alone you might feel, you are never alone when you are in the covenant. Each and everyone of us was at Sinai with you, and each and everyone of us is here for you today. This is your shul. This is your community. I am your rabbi. You are part of us. This is your home. Baruch Ata Adonai, Yotzer et Adam Be’zelmo, Bz’elem dmut tavnito, V’hitkin lo mimenu, binyan ade’i ad. Blessed are you, God, who fashions each person in their own likeness, and established the potential for flourishing of each human soul. Baruch ata Adonai, Yotzer Adam. Blessed are you, God, the creator of humanity.

I see you. I love you. You are blessed.

“V’ahavta l’rechah kamocha” Love your neighbor as yourself, is to know that each of us has infinite worth. This great principle, this great commandment that comes in the center of Leviticus, a book in is in the center of the Torah, which is the book that is the the center of our lives teaches us that it is holy to love other people and indeed to love the world. It is equally holy, to know that you are loved.  

What is hidden in love must be known. We must make it known. To love and to be loved is not only an academic exercise, we are dealing with real people, connected in love to all of us. To love and be loved is not just an emotional disposition, it is a mitzvah - a deed, an act, an overt and explicit act from one person to another and as the Torah teaches, from one person to themselves. Which means over the course of this year I will be coming back to this topic of mental health on several occasions.

More importantly, I have called a meeting. On Sunday, September 30, at 1:00 PM, we are convening families and individuals who are touched by this mental health epidemic. Experts from across the city will be here. Organizations that are hear to help with resources will be out in force. Please come. Please bring someone with you. Please let others know. It’s too important.

We are calling the initiative, “So Healthy Together.” Across the entire community from the Early Childhood center to the Hazak our senior community, from the Youth Department to the Sisterhood to the Day School - everyone, together, will be creating mental health programing and initiatives for our entire community under the banner of “So Healthy Together.”

You don’t have to be a member to come. The programs are free. If they’re not, I’ll pay whatever it costs to make them free. This is too important. This is too sacred of a moment to let it slip away. There will be no boundaries, no one excluded. This is your shul. This is why being part of a community matters. And why our shul, Valley Beth Shalom, shows that religion is at its best when it responds to the moral and spiritual needs of each of our yearnings.  

Since 1971, we have been blessed at Valley Beth Shalom to have a Counseling Center. It’s just downstairs. It’s filled, brimming with compassionate trained counselors who are here to offer counsel and therapy to anyone who needs it at low cost or free of charge. Judie Cotton runs the counseling center and is very much my partner in this work. In addition, our wonderful counseling center will have counselors and therapists on hand at every program just to talk if you need it.  

And finally, I want to say one more word about love. On Yom Kippur, we call this the day of judgement. We stand in awe of God, fearful for what the coming year might bring. If you look closer, however, we pray that we pass before God like sheep before the shepherd. We are part of God’s flock.  

The ethic of a shepherd, though, is not to judge one guilty or innocent, righteous or sinful. The ethic of the shepherd is to know intimately the needs of his or her flock. This one needs more water, this one has more energy in the morning, this one wanders off. As much as Yom Kippur is a day of judgement, it is also a day of love, each of us assessed not by jury or a judge, but by our caretaker, our shepherd. Who loves us and knows what is inside our hearts and guides us back home. 

When you leave here today, raise your heads. Look up at the pair of windows that crown our atrium. The one over the entrance are the words of the Shema. God’s call out to each of us to listen to God’s love song, the Torah. The other, is our response to God’s call. It is our little verse; the three words upon which so much is staked. The three words that drove Rabbi Akiva to change the world.  The three words that remind us to act for justice. The three words that teach us that we are worthy of love. It’s the three words we need to hear all the time.  V'ahavtah l'rechah kamocha” “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Build our world on love. Build ourselves on love. Build our community on love, for we ourselves each and every one of us are loved everlastingly.

I love you.

Gmar Chatima Tova.

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