Read Rabbi Kravitz's Yom Kippur sermon - Adath Jeshurun ...

Rabbi Harold J. Kravitz
Yom Kippur Day 5773
September 26, 2012
The Student Struggle Against the Holocaust
In the spirit of the Yizkor service, which we will soon recite to honor the
memory and influence of those no longer living, I want to tell you a story about
three rabbis. Each of them had a connection to our synagogue. Each of them made
important contributions to Judaism in their careers. At a critical moment in history,
together they made a profound impact from which we can learn.
The first of these rabbis is Noah Golinkin, z’l. I quoted him last night
interpreting the Psalm for the season. He is the father of Rabbi David Golinkin,
President of the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem, associated with the Conservative
movement, where Rabbi Yonatan Sadoff was ordained. In my early years at Adath
we used to run a Hebrew Marathon. By the end of a day of Hebrew study a student
new to the language could read the words Adath Jeshurun from the t-shirt we
would give them. That program, and the Hebrew prayer curriculum to which it
introduced some 200,000 people, was developed by Rabbi Noah Golinkin.
The next rabbi may be better known to at least to some of you. His name is
Jerome Lipnick, also of blessed memory. He served as Senior Rabbi at Adath
Jeshurun from 1960 to 1965. You can read of his accomplishments in Adath’s
history published several years ago. It was under Rabbi Lipnick that our Shabbat
Morning Program began. He served here when the civil rights movement was
rocking this country and dedicated himself to securing human rights for African
Americans. Twice he traveled to Mississippi to participate in voter-registration
drives. He was part of the Minnesota delegation to the March on Washington in
August, 1963 and was present to hear Martin Luther King deliver his now
immortal, “I Have a Dream” speech.
The third rabbi was Moshe Sachs, of blessed memory, of Bnai Abraham, the
south side synagogue that moved from Minneapolis to St Louis Park and later
joined with Mikra Kodesh and Tifereth Bnai Jacob to form Bnai Emet, whose
legacy is now part of Adath Jeshurun. Rabbi Sachs was an incredible figure
especially talented at engaging young people. He is credited with having created
the Shabbat Morning Program model that Beth El and Adath later adopted. There
are a number of Jewish scholars and educators, such as Earl Schwartz who we are
blessed to sometimes have teach here, who credit Rabbi Sachs for their career
paths. Rabbi Sachs also inspired this community’s active engagement in the
movement to free Soviet Jews and wrote a book about that experience. I had the
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privilege of getting to know Rabbi Sachs in his retirement in Jerusalem. I had the
special honor of visiting with him, at the invitation of his son Noam, shortly before
his death in 2009. I had the opportunity to thank him for the incredible
contributions he made in his years here.
You may, or may not have heard of these rabbis, but there is a chapter from
early in their lives that I want us to honor, acknowledge and learn from today. All
three men attended rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New
York, which has produced most of the clergy for our congregation. The three of
them overlapped there in 1942. That summer, 70 years ago, Americans were
hearing shocking reports from Europe about ongoing attacks against Jews at the
hands of Nazi Germany. In June, 1942, Jews who had escaped reported that the
Germans had begun to systematically exterminate Poland’s Jewish population, and
had already murdered an estimated 700,000 Jews there.
In August of 1942 a telegram was sent to Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, a major
leader of the American Jewish community by Gerhart Riegner, who represented
the World Jewish Congress in Europe. He reported that the Nazis had plans for the
deportation and extermination of all Jews in countries occupied or controlled by
Germany, numbering as many as 4million. Imagine trying to make sense of that.
People here had difficulty believing that such an outrageous report could possibly
be true.
This telegram placed huge responsibility on the shoulders of Rabbi Wise.
He was the preeminent Reform rabbi of his time, renowned for his work to
establish a Jewish state in Palestine, despite the opposition of many in his
movement at the time. Rabbi Wise was known to have had strong ties and some
access to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Rabbi Wise questioned the State Department about the horrendous reports
coming from Europe, but was asked to withhold public comment until these claims
could be properly investigated. It took until November, 1942 for the US State
Dept. to confirm the accuracy of Riegner’s memo. Wise then moved quickly to
publicize the terrifying reports about European Jewry that he was receiving.
That fall, Noah Golinkin was in his first year of rabbinical school at JTS. He
read of what was happening in Europe with particular horror. Born in Poland, he
had only immigrated to the US in 1938. The papers were now reporting that the
world in which he was raised was literally going up in smoke. With new friends
made at JTS, Moshe “Buddy” Sachs and Jerry Lipnick, they resolved to do
something to awaken the American Jewish Community to the nightmare unfolding
in Europe. In the JTS dormitory in November 1942 they formed what they called
the “European Committee of the Student Body of the Jewish Theological
Seminary.” Even by the standards of the times this was not such a catchy name.
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The committee’s initial agenda was modest. In November and December
they inserted a special prayer for Divine intercession on behalf of Europe’s Jews
and recited extra chapters of Psalms in the campus Shabbat services. When major
Jewish organizations proclaimed a community-wide day of fasting on December 2
for Hitler’s Jewish victims, they recruited their fellow student’s participation and
urged them to donate their meal money for overseas relief.
The JTS students expected the confirmation of the mass killings of Jews in
Europe to be met with a massive outpouring of protest by the American Jewish
community. At first there was some movement in that direction. In addition to the
national fast day, leaders of American Jewry arranged a Dec 8 th meeting with
President Roosevelt, who appeared unmoved by their urgings.
Seeing a lukewarm response, the young JTS students insisted on a meeting
with Rabbi Wise, a pretty chutzpadik move. They were disheartened when Rabbi
Wise dismissed the idea that a safe haven be sought to which Jews could flee in as
much as the British had blocked entry to Palestine to appease the Arabs. The
threesome proposed that students be mobilized on college campuses around the
country to sound the alarm on what was happening in Europe. Wise rejected that
proposal as well counseling the young men to trust his judgment and be patient.
In truth, Wise was working behind the scenes to get a joint statement of
condemnation of Germany by the Allied nations. The very next day a weak
statement of Allied nations was issued saying that the perpetrators of these
atrocities would be punished after the war. The students felt like they had received
two punches in the gut. First, they were shocked by the lack of responsiveness of
Rabbi Wise. Secondly the Allied nations were saying that they would do nothing to
stop the atrocity, only threatening to hold the Germans accountable when the war
ended.
The three young JTS students would not relent. They were determined to
shatter the complacency of the leadership of the American Jewish community that
was perhaps afraid to alienate President Roosevelt or even more afraid, in a far
more anti-Semitic time in this country, that Jews would be attacked here for caring
only about other Jews at the expense of the greater goal of winning the war.
The challenges faced by these students in getting their message out were
enormous. There was no internet. Material had to be printed and mailed. Yet these
three rabbinical students organized a movement that had a significant impact in
moving the hearts and minds of American Jewry to finally speak out aggressively,
though belatedly, on behalf of their brethren in Europe.
In February, 1943 they organized an Inter-Seminary Conference of the
Plight of European Jewry with their neighboring, Protestant, Union Theological
Seminary. Several hundred Jewish and Christian Seminarians joined together to
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hear the extent of the problem and commit themselves to action. They issued alerts
to every synagogue in the country calling for prayer and action.
In March of 1943 the trio jointly published an article in the Reconstructionist
Magazine, which then had a wide readership among leaders of the American
Jewish community. The article entitled “Retribution is Not Enough,” responded to
the Allied Nation’s statement that Germany would be held accountable after the
war. The JTS activists wrote, “We do not want retribution for Jews who have
already died. We prefer help for those Jews who yet live.” The bulk of the criticism
in the article was leveled at the American Jewish community for failing to “take
any steps beyond protest to indicate that they are really concerned.” The JTS
students outlined a far-reaching campaign of political action. They called on
America’s rabbis and synagogue to spearhead this advocacy. They called for an
Aid European Jewry Week, a kind of shiva week with special services and
programs and the wearing of black ribbons of mourning. They composed a special
prayer to be read, accompanied by a moment of silence, whenever Jews gathered.
All of these efforts would be directed toward influencing the Roosevelt
administration to seize the opportunities still available for rescuing Europe’s Jews.
The story of these three rabbis and their success in finally motivating
Americans to action is recounted in an incredible book written by Rabbi David
Golinkin, Noah’s son and Rafael Medoff, a Washington Based Holocaust scholar.
Their book, The Student Struggle Against the Holocaust, published in 2010 sheds
new light on the critical role played by Golinkin, Lipnick and Sachs in sounding
the alarm in the Jewish community and beyond. Their advocacy moved the major
American Jewish organizations, who had been sitting on the sidelines afraid of
anti-Semitism and of ruffling feathers in Washington, to finally become fully
engaged. The White House and Congress, which had felt no great need to respond
to the plight of the Jews started to pay attention. The book claims that at least
several hundred thousand lives were saved because of the new assertiveness of the
American Jewish community that had been so long in coming.
I found it especially moving reading The Student Struggle Against the
Holocaust because of the connection I had to each of the rabbis, having meet
Rabbis Golinkin and Sachs and having the Adath connection to Rabbi Lipnick. It is
fascinating to see how their experience influenced the paths taken by each of them.
All three rabbis became strong advocates in their careers on behalf of Israel, the
civil rights movement and the cause of freeing Soviet Jewry.
The book re-publishes a powerful article of Rabbi Lipnick’s from Adath’s
Newsletter the Clarion in Oct., 1963 entitled “Two Black Ribbons.” He compares
the JTS student’s call in 1943 to American Jewry to wear black ribbons to mourn
the Jews of Europe and the black ribbon he wore for a month to mourn the four
black children who had just been killed in the bombing of a Birmingham church.
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Our community was the direct beneficiary of the talents of each of these
rabbis especially of Rabbis Sachs and Lipnick who served in Minneapolis. The
chapter of their involvement in stirring the American Jewish community to action
is not widely known, but is alluded to in Adath’s history volume. It is also
acknowledged by Rabbi Haskel Lookstein in his well-regarded study of the
lackluster response of the American Jewish community to the plight of European
Jews, Were We our Brothers’ Keepers?
It is a troubling chapter that shows what can happen when Jews fail to use
the power available to us to speak out about the critical issues of the day. David
Golinkin concludes a personal chapter near the end of the book reflecting on the
actions of these three men and on basic Jewish principles they taught that should
always guide us as Jews. They are principles such as:
I am my brother’s keeper (Gen 4:9) Hashomer achi anochi
Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor (Lev 19:19)
Lo Ta’amod al dam re-echa
All Jews are responsible for each other (Shevuot 39a)
Kol Yisrael Arevim zeh ba-zeh
Though the three were plagued by the feeling that they had not done enough,
David Golinkin concludes that the rabbinical students actions probably saved
hundreds of thousands of lives teaching us that “one, or in this case three people,
can change the world and make the world a better place.”
In recounting this story brought to life in David Golinkin and Rafael
Medoff’s study The Student Struggle Against the Holocaust this Yom Kippur, I
hope we will think about what issues any one of us could take on to make a critical
difference in the world? There are so many possibilities:
-There are good reasons to be deeply concerned about a nuclear-armed Iran,
though I believe that there are legitimate differing views both here and in Israel
about how best to respond to this very real threat. It is especially ironic that while
the Jewish people is observing Yom Kippur, Pres Ahmadinejad of Iran is
speaking. It behooves us to speak out against his threats.
-There is much to fear for Israel with serious threats of Hezbollah in Lebanon and
Hamas in Gaza, with revolution in Syria to Israel’s North and an increasingly
antagonistic giant neighbor in Egypt to the South.
These are external threats to Israel. There are also internal threats that Israel
faces:
-There is the growing threat of schism between ultra- religious and ultra-secular
Jews.
-There are elements in Israel who are far less committed to the values of
democracy that we have always taken for granted.
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-There is a great need to promote pluralism and tolerance of religious differences
in Israel as we do when we work to strengthen the Masorti Movement in Israel. I
thank you for the support you have provided to this cause.
-Another important issue is to look closely at the ways in which Israel is dealing
with African Refuges as it builds a detention center in the Negev.
-What about the ways Israel is dealing with, or inadequately dealing with the plight
of Ethiopian Jews?
Those are threats to Israel. What about the many important issues facing this
country:
-This year I have taken a leadership role with MAZON: a Jewish Response to
Hunger to combat hunger that plagues the world in which 1 in 5 people in this
country and 1in 4 in Israel are food insecure. I very much appreciate the support
our congregation has given to MAZON and that at least 80 people here have joined
a local -MAZON Advocacy Initiative to advocate on the issue of childhood
nutrition in MN.
-Locally there are the issues of the proposed constitutional amendments on
marriage and voter ID about which I have taken a public stand encouraging people
to vote NO because I think that both of them are assaults on people’s dignity.
Thankfully, these are not issues of potential genocide, but these are critically
important to the dignity and respect for people who are created in the image of
God.
You may have your own priorities for what you consider to be a critical
issue. There is plenty of room for each of us to pursue one of these agendas.
Furthermore we do not have to be of one mind about the stance we take, though it
is very important that we listen carefully to each other’s arguments and treat people
with whom we disagree with respect.
But if we learn anything from the story I have told you about these three
young rabbinical students who impacted on the world and impacted on the Jewish
community, it is that we must not allow ourselves to be indifferent. Indifference is
the greatest sin of our times when so often it seems that people want to be
entertained rather than being challenged. Important issues are playing out around
us and too many people want to close their eyes to them.
Any one of us can seize the opportunity to aspire to some level of greatness
as I discussed earlier in the story I told about Abraham Lincoln. It is unlikely that
any of us will have the opportunity to aspire to the level of greatness that Lincoln
achieved or even to that of the three rabbinical students I talked about today.
But be sure that there is no cause that is achieved simply by the action of one great
person or even of three. Every cause that is worth working on is accomplished by
the small contributions of the many individuals who get behind it. That is one of
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the incredible aspects of the Internet, which makes it possible for many individuals
to combine their efforts to accomplish extraordinary things. But it has to start with
each one of us committing to doing something to make the world a better place.
A number of years ago Elie Wiesel was speaking here in MN at Carleton
College. I heard his inspiring talk broadcast on MPR. I still recall his answer to a
question asked by one of those who attended who despaired that there are so many
problems in the world and so many issues, it is overwhelming. Elie Wiesel’s
response to him was, “Start somewhere. “It is great advice. Start somewhere!
In a few moments we will start the Yizkor service and remember those who
blessed our lives. As we think of them, I ask you to consider the stories of these
three rabbis and think about what values can we learn from those who are no
longer in the world. And as we remember them I urge you-
START SOMEWHERE!
Before Musaf Yom Kippur Day 5773 2012
Rabbi Harold J. Kravitz
Adath Jeshurun Congregation, Minnetonka, MN
My colleague Rabbi David Greenspoon shared a wonderful lesson from a
United Methodist Minister Steve Goodier who tells the following story about
Abraham Lincoln.
It is said that President Abraham Lincoln often slipped out of the White
House on Wednesday evenings to listen to the sermons of Dr. Phineas Gurley at
New York Avenue Presbyterian Church.
He generally preferred to come and go unnoticed, so when Dr. Gurley knew
the president was coming, he left his study door open. On one of those occasions,
the president quietly entered through a side door of the church, took his seat in the
minister's study, located just off the sanctuary, and propped the door open just wide
enough to hear the preacher.
During the walk home one Wednesday evening, an aide asked Mr. Lincoln
his appraisal of the sermon. The president thoughtfully replied, "The content was
excellent... he delivered with eloquence... he had put work into the message...."
"Then you thought it was an excellent sermon?" questioned the aide.
"No," Lincoln answered.
"But you said that the content was excellent, it was delivered with eloquence and it
showed much work," the aide pressed.
"That's true," Lincoln said. "But Dr. Gurley forgot the most important ingredient.
He forgot to ask us to do something great."
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According to Rabbi Greenspoon the Rev Goodier goes on to say that there is
nothing wrong with average lives and average accomplishments. Most of the good
of the world is built on the accumulated efforts of everyday people. But, as Lincoln
seemed to know, a life should strive for some greatness.
Goodier suggests that there are normal, everyday things one can do in
striving for greatness. We might be part of a relationship that, if given more effort,
could be outstanding. Or we can volunteer for an organization which is truly doing
something excellent. We can join a cause that is attempting something great, even
if in small measures. Instead of saying responding to a beautiful dream, "I could
never do that," we can know that if can attempt it and if we succeed, we just might
do something amazing.
Ultimately Goodier suggests that if Abraham Lincoln is right, then every life
should strive to reach a little further today than it did yesterday, for there is some
greatness in each of us.
________
Intro to Vidui Yom Kippur 5773- 2012
Compare the top of Machzor Lev Shalem p.347 Ki Anu Amecha, which is a
positive assessment of the Jewish people and our God, with the bottom of page 347
which begins the Vidui. It also starts with Anu statements, but these are harsh
negative judgments in which we are not very good in comparison to God’s kind
consideration of us.
It is worth taking a moment here to consider the teaching of the great
medieval Rabbi, Maimonides, who in his Code of Jewish Law the Mishneh Torah
3:8 teaches the following about the laws of teshuvah-
Maimonides says:
It is necessary therefore that everyone, throughout the year, should regard himself
as if he were half innocent and half guilty, and should regard the whole of mankind
as half innocent and half guilty. If then he commits one more sin, he presses down
the scale of guilt against himself and the whole world and causes his destruction. If
he fulfills one commandment, he turns the scale of merit in his favor and in that of
the whole world and brings salvation and deliverance to all his fellow-creatures
and to himself, as it is said, 'The righteous person is the foundation of the world"
(Proverbs 10:25); this is to say, that one who acts justly presses down the scale of
merit in favor of all the world and saves it,'
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As we consider the list of sins that we will read in the Vidui let us be very
conscious of Maimonides’ teaching that any single action, positive or negative can
make a difference for any one of us and for the entire world.
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